Britain’s tragic tale of dither, delay, and deaths
Alastair Campbell’s assertion that we have ‘witnessed a national catastrophe’ is hard to dispute when the UK has the second-worst Covid-19 death toll in the world.
“We are witnessing a national catastrophe,” bellowed the headline of Alastair Campbell’s recent article about the British government’s bungled response to the coronavirus crisis.
Few of us can disagree with Campbell’s 13,000word evisceration of the unmitigated disaster which has unfurled over the last couple of months.
Tony Blair’s former communications chief has been one of the most vociferous critics of Boris Johnson and administration’s inept handling of the crisis, which is a tragic tale of dither, delay, dearth, and deaths.
While some may say Campbell has a tacit political agenda given his Labour Party kingpin past, his assessment cannot be argued with in the context of more than 35,000 deaths (or over 50,000, according to some statisticians) from this dreadful disease.
When you have the worst Covid-19 fatality figures in Europe and second-highest in the world behind the United States, serious and searching questions must be asked. Firstly, was Boris Johnson complacent about the outbreak of the disease?
At the start of 2020, he was basking in the glory of finally having secured Britain’s exit from the European Union, three and a half years after the country narrowly voted in favour of Brexit.
Little did he know that the struggles of ‘Let’s get Brexit done’, the mantra which underpinned his resounding General Election victory in late 2019, would be dwarfed by one of the biggest pandemics in history. Johnson seemed blithely dismissive of Covid-19
Initially, however, like his good friend Donald Trump, Johnson seemed blithely dismissive of the exponential spread of Covid-19. In early March, with the World Health Organization warning of a potential pandemic, his government was promoting rigorous hand-washing as the best defence. Johnson jovially
proclaimed he was still shaking people’s hands after meeting patients on March 3. A week later, he told the morning television show, why he was avoiding taking ‘draconian’ lockdown measures. “One of the theories is, that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population,” he said.
Johnson was espousing herd immunity, an epidemiological term usually reserved to describe how the population as a whole is protected from a disease depending on the levels of people vaccinated.
Yet to be fair to Johnson, he was ostensibly only following the advice given to him by experts such as Sir Patrick Vallance, England’s chief scientific advisor. In March, Sir Patrick told a government briefing that the UK’s approach was aimed at broadening the peak of the epidemic, and allowing immunity to build up among the population. The WHO has since denounced herd immunity as a dangerous concept.
Johnson then drastically changed tack when, on March 20 with Covid-19 cases and deaths rocketing, schools, pubs, restaurants, gyms and other social venues were ordered to close. Three days later, Johnson imposed a nationwide lockdown, telling people they should go outside only to buy food, exercise once a day or travel to work if they could not do so from home.
This came just two weeks after 150,000 people were allowed to attend the four-day Cheltenham horse-racing festival. As we know now, mass gatherings are ideal breeding grounds for Covid-19, so why was this allowed to go ahead?
Other European countries such as Germany imposed a lockdown earlier and have far fewer deaths as a result, which also owes much to its introduction of mass testing.
Johnson did not appear to appreciate the seriousness of the virus, resulting in many of us feeling it had been over-hyped and was just akin to flu. It also felt as if he did not want to upset people’s status quo, while prioritising the economy over public health.
Johnson thrives on being the jocular man of the people, but what a national emergency required was more austere, urgent measures and a leader displaying gravitas.
Why were we so dismally under-prepared for such a devastating scenario? And now, easing of lockdown restrictions in mid-May resulted in ‘Stay Alert’ replacing ‘Stay at Home’ in the government’s Covid-19 slogan. Stay alert to what exactly, Boris?!
The plan includes a staged undertaking to allow businesses to reopen, advice on avoiding public transport and wearing face coverings as well as a 14day quarantine for most international arrivals. But critics galore have said the details are nebulous and did not help people to know whether they should go back to work, how they would get there and how they could stay safe in the workplace.
These are dark hours and days indeed for Johnson and his much-maligned government, but the darkest may be yet to come.
Can blustering Boris eventually engineer a ‘victory’ of which Winston Churchill would be proud?
As it stands, Johnson looks more like the docile, nodding dog called Churchill from a renowned British car insurance advertisement. As such, the canine Churchill’s lament of ‘Oh no!’ looks increasingly apt in light of Britain’s bungled response to Covid-19.
These are dark hours and days indeed for Johnson and his muchmaligned government, but the darkest may be yet to come.