Piers Morgan has blasted the “rank hypocrisy” of Boris Johnson and labelled the prime minister a “complete disgrace”.
The former Good Morning Britain host hit out at Johnson after he admitted attending a lockdown breaking party at Downing Street in May 2020, earlier this week.
Mr Morgan appeared on the Sunday Morning politics show with Sophie Raworth on BBC 1 this morning.
On the prime minister, he said: “I don't think jury is out at all. The court of public opinion has come back and found him guilty of the most brazen rank hypocrisy.
"The polls suggest that his popularity is sinking to an all time low but it's not really about that, this all comes down to that one party. Forget all the others for a moment, the one party back in May 2020.
"This was a time when the entire country had been in lockdown for weeks on end This was a time when you couldn't go and see loved ones when they were dying in hospital from this virus.
"This was a time when on that day Oliver Dowden, the government minister you've got coming on, and it will be interesting to see what he says about this, but literally minutes after he has the brass neck to stand there at the Downing Street press conference and order everybody you're allowed to only meet one person outside a two metre distance or another household.
"I met my oldest son that day, for the first time in three months at a two metre distance. I wasn't even able to shake hands with my son, but I had it on that scale of what was going on."
Mr Morgan continued: “I had a cousin who couldn't see his dying father. I had a great school friend who couldn't see her mother who died in a care home from Covid had to say goodbye on FaceTime, then had a funeral for a handful of people.
"I had a co-worker, Kate Garraway at Good Morning Britain, who couldn't go and see her critically ill husband.
"All over the country, people have these kinds of stories, and they were horrific stories of separation and yet the very people who were telling the country to do this were having a massive knees up in Downing Street that night and carried on having these knees ups throughout the entire pandemic.
"It's a complete disgrace. It doesn't mean he will go, but it does mean he should go because public trust in the government has surely been completely shattered.
"Now the Conservative Party will decide whether he will continue as leader but every Conservative MP must be looking at all these stories and concluding surely that public confidence has been irrevocably destroyed by what's happened here.
"I can't think of a bigger breach, frankly, than a global health emergency where the government made these draconian orders and completely disregard them with impunity."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here