Iain Duncan Smith said people still went to office during WW II and was lampooned online

Last week Boris Johnson has said young people should get back to the office to stop their colleagues gossiping about them.

The Prime Minister has urged people to return to the office and stop the practice of working from home that was widespread during the height of the coronavirus pandemic to stop the spread of the disease.

But speaking to radio station LBC, Mr Johnson admitted he had not yet managed to get all his staff back into the office full time.

The PM said: “I think that for young people in particular, it is really essential to be in a… if you’re going to learn on the job, you can’t just do it on Zoom.

“You’ve got to be able to come in and sit at the… you’ve got to know what everyone else is talking about.

“Otherwise, you’re going to be gossiped about and you’re going to lose out.

“You need to be there, and you have the stimulus of exchange and competition.”

Tory chairman Oliver Dowden told a Telegraph conference fringe event: “People really want the Government to lead by example, they want civil servants to get back to work.

“We have got to start leading by example on that.”

He added: “People need to get off their Pelotons and get back to their desks.”

Iain Duncan Smith

Well the Mail on Sunday’s headline was quite bonkers.

But, as ever, the general insanity continued inside the paper. In a piece for The Mailon Sunday, with the headline “In the 1940s they kept coming to the office – even when Hitler’s bombs were raining down”, former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith said “all too many” civil servants and government employees “have failed to see Covid as a challenge’.

“And instead of rising to that challenge, as the wartime generation would have done, they have thrown their hands up in despair – before locking the doors and scuttling off home, of course.

“When I think of all the brave civil servants who went to work in the 1940s, determined to do their bit regardless of the threat from falling bombs, I wonder what has happened to us as a nation.”