We deserve honesty not political lies
It is a tribute to the fortitude and patience of the British people that nearly nine in 10 obey lockdown rules to the letter.
The least we deserve in return from Boris Johnson and his ministers is transparency and honesty. What we get are lies, damned lies and dodgy statistics.
A political lie is the willingness to deceive. Matt Hancock promised 100,000 tests a day by the end of April. When the 30th arrived, the Health Secretary simply mailed out an extra 40,000 to meet his figure.
It was the Covid-19 equivalent of a cheque in the post. And he has missed his target six days in a row.
So the nation will have little confidence in Mr Johnson’s pledge of 200,000 by the end of this month.
A political lie is the failure to tell the unvarnished truth. Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick boasted of 400,000 surgical gowns from Turkey.
They did not arrive next day as promised. When they did they were useless – a fact revealed by a newspaper, not the Government.
A political lie is to claim there was enough PPE – and that became a damn lie as the lack of it costs lives. We are heading towards 200 frontline deaths.
Claims that shortages were down to distribution difficulties were branded by the Enfield council leader Nesil Caliskan as “an absolute lie”.
On becoming PM, Mr Johnson pledged to begin work immediately “to fix the crisis in social care once and for all”. Had he been telling the truth, care homes would not be in the desperate state they are now.
MANIPULATED
It was American writer Mark Twain who popularised the phrase “lies, damned lies and statistics”. His point was that numbers can be manipulated.
No government is immune. Labour claimed it hit targets for patients to spend no longer than four hours in A&E. But they were simply put in other parts of the hospital before time was up.
The Tories reduced hospital waiting lists by not putting people on them. No10’s daily graphs are today’s version of this sleight of hand.
At first they appeared to show Covid-19 deaths on a similar trajectory as those in Italy, France and Spain. Only pressure to include victims outside hospitals revealed the true gruesome picture. If ministers had been straight with us we’d have known earlier we were heading for Europe’s highest toll.
The statistics we do believe are of the sort compiled by the British Medical Association which show 1,620 doctors reporting no eye protection, 893 with no scrubs, 522 with no goggles and 107 without gloves.
Our front page reported medics’ fears over PPE scarcity SIX weeks ago. We expected better from a government relying on the goodwill of British people.
Ministers asked us to put our faith in them then betrayed our trust. Mr Johnson must try to regain it when he addresses the nation tonight.
We can accept measures to fight a virus not yet fully understood may alter as circumstances do.
We can accept that this may lead to mistakes which might later need to be corrected.
What we cannot accept is those governing us being so flagrantly economical with the truth.