Piers Morgan has delivered the perfect quip to a Tory minister who struggled to explain the government’s Covid testing regime at UK airports.
Morgan laid bare his thought about Boris Johnson and his ministers when he quizzed vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi about No 10’s airport testing strategy on Good Morning Britain.
Morgan asked the minister if he knew the number of people tested at the UK’s borders, prompting Zahawi to say: “I know the secretary of state for transport is looking at a testing regime for people coming into -“
Morgan began talking over the minister, saying: “Look, it’s a simple question. You’re the vaccine guy and you know you’re in a race against a virus.
“We have, for inexplicable reasons to anyone with a brain, resolutely refused to test people who arrive at our borders.
“No one’s understood why, but I ask, as I asked Michael Gove, because I know the answer. I just wonder if you, another senior member of the government – do you know the answer?”
Zahawi started off: “The reason we don’t do that -” and was abruptly he was cut off by Morgan, who chimed in: “What, answer questions?”
The minister shrugged off the remark, continuing: “You don’t take a test at the border because it’s pointless.”
The interview descended into further chaos when Morgan caught Zahawi laughing at his own answer.
“You can laugh, but let me explain why it’s not a laughing matter,” Morgan extolled.
“You just confirmed what Michael Gove didn’t know and that was the truth. It’s zero. We don’t test anyone at our borders.
“Secondly, we have never required anybody to test negative before they hop on a plane to our country, unlike almost every other country in the world.
“I simply ask again, why? Why, when you know many people must be coming in every day, who probably have the virus?”
Zahawi responded: “Because if you ask the scientists, Chris Whitty and Jonathan Van Tam, they’ll tell you that test at the border is near pointless because that person is maybe showing no symptoms.”
One viewer said: “Good questions. We shouldn’t be allowing people in untested and then when in symptoms or not they should self isolate.”
Another tweeted: “We test at the border in New Zealand then people go to a managed quarantine facility for two weeks.”
A third wrote: “You couldn’t make it up!”
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