“It's a sad indictment of our times," one person said in response to the confession.

"These events drive home the urgency of action," one scientist said.

“Unless urgent steps are taken to address this, we will see very small numbers of people taking up this offer and a lot of the public’s generosity squandered," the Labour shadow secretary said.

It comes as Jacob Rees-Mogg claimed the government parties allegedly held during Covid restrictions are “disproportionate fluff” and “fundamentally trivial”.

“Now is the time to end the culture of self-doubt, the constant self-questioning and introspection, the ludicrous debates about language, statues and pronouns," she said.

“I don’t think those two situations are directly analogous, clearly they are not directly analogous and I don’t think the prime minister was saying that they were directly analogous," the chancellor said.

"She tries to join in the chant of 'shame on you' before realising it's aimed at her. Lovely stuff," one Twitter user noted.

He insisted “these problems can be solved” without backtracking on UK’s commitment to end free movement for EU citizens coming to Britain.

He said the West “doesn’t even bother to hide that its aim is to damage the entire Russian economy, every Russian”.