TV Poll Shows 68% Want Johnson To Resign After UK Passes 100,000 COVID-19 Deaths

Sixty-eight percent of the viewers who answered a poll launched on Wednesday by the ITV broadcaster said they wanted UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign after the country passed 100,000 coronavirus deaths

LONDON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 27th January, 2021) Sixty-eight percent of the viewers who answered a poll launched on Wednesday by the ITV broadcaster said they wanted UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson to resign after the country passed 100,000 coronavirus deaths.

According to the survey's results shown at the Good Morning Britain show cohosted by Piers Morgan, only 36 percent answered "no" to the question: should Boris Johnson resign?

The UK passed a grim milestone on Tuesday after the Department of Health and Social Care announced that over 100,000 people have died of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.

Later on, Johnson said at a press conference that he was deeply sorry for every life that had been lost and took full responsibility for everything the government has done, renewing criticism over the government's response to the pandemic.

Reacting to the announcement, Labour leader Keir Starmer said it was a "national tragedy" and described passing the milestone of 100,000 deaths as a "terrible reminder of what we have lost as a country."

Although he did not call for Johnson to resign, Starmer urged the Conservative government to "learn the lessons of what went wrong."

Labour Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth confirmed on Wednesday at the Good Morning Britain show that the UK's main opposition party will not press for Johnson's resignation, although he admitted that the prime minister has shown that "he is not up to the job.

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"We're saying, you've made huge mistakes, monumental mistakes in these past 12 months, please, learn and don't make these mistakes again," Ashworth said.

Senior lawyer and former prosecutor Nazir Afzal announced, however, that he has instructed his lawyers to investigate if there is evidence to investigate Johnson for misconduct or negligence over the death of 100,000 people.

"I have instructed my lawyers to consider whether anything he did or didn't do amounts to gross negligence or misconduct in public office & what consequences should follow," Afzal twitted after Johnson's televised press briefing on Tuesday evening.

The lawyer recalled that the prime minister has never met with the families of the people who died from COVID-19 or called for a day of remembrance or even a moment of silence for them.

Afzal also rebutted Johnson's claims that hundreds of frontline health workers had given their lives, and said that their lives "were taken" because the government did not prepare for the pandemic and put them in the line of fire without personal protective equipment.