Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown criticises Boris Johnson's handling of the pandemic

"My view of leadership is that you've got to be two steps ahead of events...we're not prepared for the next wave of the virus."

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown criticises Boris Johnson's handling of the pandemic.

Speaking to Ayesha Hazarika he said:

"My view of leadership is that you've got to be two steps ahead of events. You cannot afford to be behind the curve. You cannot allow events to be dominated by the morning's newspapers, instead of thinking ahead to the real problems you're going to face in the long run."

"We're going to have massive business bankruptcies over the next two or three years. We've got rising unemployment and massive youth unemployment. We think a million young people are sitting at home doing nothing at the moment when they could be doing training, education or work. And we've still got problems with the testing system because we're only picking up too small a percentage of people with our testing system, who've got the virus and lots of people are going undetected, and they're passing it on. And even when we have the test, they're taking too long to come back and therefore more people are being infected as a result."

"And because the testing system is not working well enough, the tracking system, the tracing system, is not there yielding the results that we expected off it. So you've got to be ahead of the curve. And being ahead of the curve means you've got to plan for events that you think are possible, but not necessarily inevitable and you've got to be able to show that you are ready for what is going to come ahead of you. And we are not prepared for Brexit. We're not prepared for the next wave of the virus. And of course, the economy has not prepared for a sharper lockdown, if that is to happen. I mean, these are real problems that we've got to address and to be ahead of events is what leadership is all about."