The government’s last-minute u-turn on restrictions over Christmas has been heart breaking. It’s been such a difficult year and now millions of families are having to cancel their plans for the holidays.

The rise in infection rates does mean that these tighter restrictions are necessary but there was no excuse for Boris Johnson to wait until the eleventh hour to make his decision. Earlier in the week, Keir Starmer challenged the government to toughen up the restrictions but Boris Johnson dismissed the idea out of hand.

As a result, we’ve had chaotic scenes at train stations in London as people rushed to leave the capital and around 1,500 lorries are stuck in Kent after France shut its UK border to stop the spread of the new coronavirus variant.

While the government has admitted that it has lost control of the virus, Labour has set out plans to reduce infection rates and stop the chaos at our borders. Boris Johnson must now take decisive action to get to grips with the situation.