Covid clarity still in short supply Viewpoint

In the past few days, one thing has become depressingly clear: the riddling and misleading communication that has characterised this government’s failure to control the pandemic will not soon find an antidote. On Wednesday in Parliament the prime minister was asked by Peter Kyle, Labour MP for the seaside constituency of Hove, what he would do ‘‘in the absence of the promised [track and trace] app to make sure [coastal] communities are destinations for investment and not destinations for Covid?’’

Boris Johnson replied with typical scattergun harrumphing: ‘‘I will be calling on local representatives such as himself to show some guts and determination and champion their communities as venues for people to return to and support!’’ Those guts were everywhere on display on beaches by Thursday. But those who crammed the beaches – 500,000 in Dorset alone – could justify their day trips as simply doing their national duty.

Inevitably, at the end of the week, Johnson was forced to disown another ill-judged one-liner and argue people should ‘‘stop taking liberties’’. By that point, any damage was already likely done.

The daily mortality figures and a rate of new infection that would be a cause for draconian panic in most other nations are apparently to be taken as an indication that the virus is now under control.