Former Tory minister Edwina Currie has been criticised for a “callous” tweet to a grieving man as she sought to defend Boris Johnson over breaking his own Covid laws.
The post came after the ex-MP replied to a post by the television presenter Rylan Clark during a busy Wednesday morning in which Ms Currie defended the prime minister on both social media and ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
Mr Johnson, along with his wife, Carrie, and the chancellor Rishi Sunak were all fined by the Metropolitan Police on Tuesday over a surprise birthday event held for the PM in No 10’s Cabinet Room during lockdown. All have apologised and paid their fixed penalty notices but the prime minister and Mr Sunak have faced calls to resign.
“He’s officially broke the law,” Mr Clark wrote. “That’s it ain’t it?”
Ms Currie replied: “No, it isn’t. Shouldn’t have happened, but it’s done now. In case you hadn’t noticed, this all happened two years ago. Putin is laughing at us. Get real.”
Benjamin Cohen, the founder and chief executive of LGBT+ news website Pink News, then responded to Ms Currie’s apparent attempt to wash over the latest development in the No 10 lockdown parties’ scandal, reminding her of the pain Covid bereaved families faced during the pandemic.
“Two years ago, I had to say goodbye to my grandad over FaceTime and wasn’t allowed to hug my mum at his funeral,” Mr Cohen wrote. “This isn’t something that we are likely to ever forget or forgive.”
Ms Currie snapped back: “But it won’t bring them back either, Ben.” She ended the message with an emoji of a crying face.
The blunt message generated more than 2,000 responses by Wednesday afternoon, with many calling Ms Currie out for being “horrible” or “out of touch” with the public.
“What a horrific response to this bereaved man,” a woman named Chrissie Thomas said.
Meanwhile, another woman, Elfie, replied: “There’s a great big swinging brick where Edwina’s heart should be.”
“Eggwina has never been one for reading the mood of the nation. Jeez!” one account, named RatioWatch, tweeted.
The popular nickname used to refer to Ms Currie was coined in 1988 when she resigned from her post as a junior health minister, under Margaret Thatcher, over the salmonella-in-eggs controversy.
Another critic of Ms Currie’s, the London School of Economics’ Prof Louise Locock, said of the tweet to Mr Cohen: “That is a shockingly callous thing to say.”
Speaking to Good Morning Britain earlier, around the same time she took to Twitter, Ms Currie made it clear she “really doesn’t care” about the fines being issued to senior government figures who broke their own coronavirus laws.
“What matters for me and what matters for millions of people in this country is the results we get from our politicians, and the results we get from Boris are pretty good,” she said when asked by presenter Ranvir Singh to clarify whether she believed Mr Johnson had broken Covid rules or the ministerial code.
Ms Singh and her co-presenter Richard Madeley went on to say Ms Currie’s “frank” remarks were a worrying sign of “where we are today on our political climate”.
