MPs disapprove after Boris Johnson walks out of Commons as Theresa May begins speaking

Footage shows Johnson standing up and leaving just a few words into former PM’s speech

MPs were heard making their disapproval known after Boris Johnson walked out of the House of Commons just as Theresa May began her speech.

Footage shows Ms May pausing briefly and pulling a seemingly incredulous grimace as the Prime Minister stood up and walked out right after she had started speaking in the chamber this afternoon.

Mr Johnson had already spent time in the Commons for Prime Minister’s Questions but decided to leave just after Ms May began, saying she did not “envy” the government for the difficult decision it faced.

After resuming her speech, Ms May accused Mr Johnson’s government of picking data to fit his coronavirus policies.

She said that the government decided to introduce a second national lockdown in England based on the prediction that the country could see 1,000 deaths a day by the end of October.

But Ms May challenged the validity of the data. She claimed the prediction was wrong and for called for the data to be made available to Parliament.

“For many people, it looks as if the figures are chosen to support the policy rather than the policy being based on the figures,” she said.

“We need these proper analyses. We need to know the details behind these models. We need to be able to assess the validity of those models … let us see it and make our own judgments.”

Ms May also called the government to reveal the economic cost of the second national lockdown in England, which will start on Thursday 5 November and last until 2 December.

Ms May has typically kept a low profile after she stood down as PM and returned to the backbenches in July 2019.

But the relationship between her and Mr Johnson has become tenser in the last few months after she became a high-profile critic of some of the government’s policies.

In October, Ms May slammed Mr Johnson’s government’s planning reform, saying that it would remove local democracy and warning against relying on an algorithm that didn’t guarantee that extra homes would be built.

In September, Ms May said the government was acting “recklessly and irresponsibly” and refused to vote with it after it had proposed a Brexit bill that admittedly broke international law.

After Ms May finished her speech, Iain Duncan Smith appeared to regret that Mr Johnson had left and said he wished the PM had listened to her point.

Additional reporting by PA