Sir Keir would have steered a better ship
TORY friends have said to me that Mr Johnson is doing a good job managing the pandemic, and anyway, Sir Keir Starmer couldn’t have done any better! Well, I think it is worthwhile recording why Sir Keir is very likely to have done a much better job.
Unlike Mr Johnson, he has actually run a real organisation successfully. As Head of the Crown Prosecution Service he had not only business strategic, financial and people issues to handle, but also the vagaries of his political masters. Meanwhile hanging from a zip wire above the Thames is a fitting image of Mr Johnson’s time as London’s Mayor.
Exhortation to the public to comply with Covid-19 law would carry weight from Sir Keir; from Mr Johnson they are set against his inability to act when his senior adviser flouted those regulations and his declared intention to break international law. Your readers may sympathise if members of the public invoke the Cummings Gambit and choose which rules to follow.
Throughout the year the only consistency of Covid-19 messaging has been its inconsistency. Face covering unnecessary followed by face covering essential. Herd immunity will work; oh no, not a good idea. Test and trace app almost ready; oh dear, it doesn’t work. Vaccine available very soon, well soon anyway, maybe by the end of the year, or maybe sometime never! Work from home; no go to the office; no work from home.
As a barrister, Sir Keir would promote consistency and integrity.
‘Follow the science’ has been a sensible approach to a novel threat. But only a non-scientist talks about ‘exact science’ – science is precisely about uncertainty.
Mr Johnson’s communication skills may produce lots of three word or three phrase slogans but they fail to show the nuance necessary of a developing picture and so appear irrational and irrelevant.
At Prime Minister’s Questions Sir Keir continues to expose Mr Johnson’s ignorance not only of detail but also of his own policies at a strategic level.
In many respects, the government has done a lot of the right things but it was fatally ill-prepared for the disease, it was irresponsibly late in recognising its seriousness, it has lost authority by following one failed target with another more ambitious (and unachievable) one, it has spurned international cooperation, and it has promoted public doubt by its inconsistency.
There is every reason to think that Sir Keir would have led us to a better place at this point in time.
Steve Barrass Via email