Boris appears to have beaten Coronavirus but has been afflicted by the same disease as the rest of his Government, “manic delusion’.
I said in this very column two weeks ago that the whole government were deluded and I was looking forward to Boris coming back and getting a grip but last night was, in marketing terms, all sizzle and no sausage.
He had absolutely no good news to deliver so instead he waxed lyrical about the fact that “We are past the peak and we are on the downward slope.”
However, many experts believe that this was actually old news as it looks like we reached the peak when Boris was still in hospital!
The approach was full of optimism and spin but dreadfully light on any form of detail and to be frank I’ve had enough of this nonsense from all of them. I am getting bored of talk about the R number but I am also fed up to the back teeth of the BS Factor!
However, later The MSM breathlessly reported that as we all clapped our NHS workers, rainbows appeared in the sky all over the UK.
Marvellous! As Annie would sing, ‘the sun will shine tomorrow!’
The Country Needs Leadership
But it won’t, will it? We are heading for the biggest recession ever and the bodies are still mounting in the morgue.
I don’t want promises that he will produce his lockdown exit plan sometime next week, I want him to treat us as adults now. His speech was the equivalent of telling your kids to be well behaved and go to bed on time and then Santa will arrive and deliver presents. We are grown-ups, Boris, tell us the blooming facts now.
It is quite obvious the lockdown will continue for months, so why not level with us?
He could have started a national debate about the so-called bubble idea where families could meet and Grandparents could see their grandkids again.
Why didn’t he expand a little on how we are going to get back to work?
Surely if we are past the peak then it is time to start talking to us the public about shielding the elderly and how the rest of us can get back to work whether that is next week or in months’ time.
Of course, the final decisions would rest with him as the PM but we are surely big enough to be told the facts and discuss them, aren’t we?
This would be called leadership.
The Old Issue of us and them
However, it’s also becoming obvious that part of their strategy is to allow the lockdown to gradually fall away by people taking the rules into their own hands. That is not leadership it is cowardice.
The roads are getting busier by the minute and although we have mostly been compliant I think people’s patience is beginning to wane and that could be dangerous for us all.
Now the big Corporations are ignoring the Government advice and just getting on with almost business as usual.
Wizz airlines are already flying back to Europe and every one from Nando’s to Wetherspoon are announcing when they are going to open again. Do they know more than the scientists?!
Meanwhile the lack of clarity in the initial advice has led to ridiculous situations where the Big Boys have stayed open whilst smaller businesses are going to the wall. The most perfect example being B&Q who were allowed to remain open whilst family run nurseries are firmly locked down.
Then of course there seems to be other rules for the very wealthy.
How the hell has Duncan Bannatyne been able to fly out of the UK to Portugal with his wife on a private jet if we are all meant to be in lockdown? Not only that he did it after furloughing many members of his staff on effectively our money.
Talking of furloughing it is apparent that many unscrupulous employers are using it as way of escaping their own responsibilities to their employees. A clear case of the old problem in the UK of ‘us and them.’
This why Boris must get a grip and give us clear and enforceable guidelines but yesterday he seemed instead to contradict his own health Minister, Matt Hancock and say that masks might be a good idea. Well if they’re a good idea now why weren’t they weeks or even months ago?
Patience Begins to Wane
Similarly, all the press talk today is about whether Hancock will hit his self-imposed target for testing. Well of course he will the figures have received more massaging than a dodgy Thai sauna!
If testing is so important today why wasn’t it back in early March when they scrapped it?
The worst delusion yesterday was the line from Boris about the fact that all our efforts have resulted in us not having to face a situation where our health service has been overwhelmed.
It was a half-truth as we all know we were woefully ill prepared for this pandemic.
It was also untrue because if you look at the graphs he illustrated yesterday, our trajectory is worse than Italy and Spain. We are on target, now that they have included the care home deaths, for having the largest Covid-19 fatalities in Europe. That is the fact and not the sizzle.
Despite all the mistakes and the ineptitude of the Government in dealing with this pandemic I really want to get behind Boris and believe in him.
The polls illustrate that the majority of the public want to do the same but he is giving me or them nothing to cling on to.
The public’s patience is beginning to wane and break which is a dangerous cocktail as more will begin to not only interpret the loose guidelines in their own way but also to actively break them.
Boris must do better.
