Good Morning Britain 's Susanna Reid got into a fiery clash with former Conservative MP Edwina Currie on Wednesday's show in a debate over the government's handling of the pandemic.
George Arbuthnott, deputy editor of The Sunday Times Insight Team, said it was "one of the most scandalous failures in British leadership in history".
Susanna said: "When you look back at what went wrong right from the start, the Prime Minister missing Cobra meetings where they were discussing this emergent threat, his failure to shut down mass gatherings and saying that they weren’t a particular risk.
"His insistence that he was carrying on shaking hands even where there might be people with Covid," she continued, as Edwina kept starting her response.
"The failure to test Track and Trace, the failure over PPE, well, the trouble is, it goes on and on and on," said Susanna, speaking over Edwina.
Edwina exclaimed: "Susanna, you’re not Piers so give me a chance! George has a book to sell, it's coming out tomorrow -"
Susanna interjected: "Sorry, Edwina Currie it has nothing to do with whether I’m Piers or not."
"These are facts which meant that we have this devastating death toll - which was the biggest mistake and what should they have done better?"
Edwina kept repeating "let me respond, let me respond," until Susanna finished, before remarking: "Thank you very much indeed.
"This time last year absolutely nobody in this country or most other countries had any experience of anything like this. If you're a government minister, as I have been minister of health, you rely heavily on the experts for advice and you don't try to counter-argue with them.
"They rely on information which at that time was very scrappy, what was coming out of China was very limited, we didn't realise until many months later that we were being infected from people in Italy, Spain and France... It was already too late to stop that."
She went on to claim that Boris Johnson's shaking hands of people with Covid was akin to Princess Diana shaking the hands of people with AIDs - to prove it was nothing to be afraid of.
Edwina is not the only MP to have taken issue with Susanna interrupting - yesterday Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab scolded Susanna for interrupting him during a debate over the police's handling of the Sarah Everard vigil.
Susanna's former co host Piers Morgan quit last week after storming off the set during a row with Alex Beresford about Meghan Markle.
Ben Shephard has been standing in for Piers but ITV has not yet announced a permanent replacement.
* Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV at 6am
