UK's Johnson accused of putting political interests before people's lives

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been accused by his former chief aide of “putting his own political interests ahead of people’s lives.”

Giving his first media interview to the BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg since he was sacked by Johnson, former aide Dominic Cummings alleged that Johnson had said last autumn when COVID-19 cases were rising that he was reluctant to tighten coronavirus restrictions because he thought people dying from it were "essentially all over 80."

Cummings also claimed that Johnson had messaged him to say: "I no longer buy all this NHS overwhelmed stuff," referring to the National Health Service, the country’s publicly funded health care system.

He said the prime minister had wanted to let COVID-19 "wash through the country" rather than destroy the economy.