LABOUR MPs Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon upped calls for a zero-Covid strategy to beat the pandemic at a People’s Assembly online rally last night.

Ms Abbott slammed Boris Johnson’s government for prioritising private-sector profit over human life with its “sleazy contracts” and “jobs for the boys and girls like [test-and-trace supremo] Dido Harding, who has no public health background whatsoever but happens to be the wife of a Tory MP.”

As for privateers like Serco, Sitel and Deloitte running a “world-beating” test-and-trace system, she asked: “Who ever heard of Serco running a world-beating anything?”