‘BORIS IS A FIGHTER... HE’LL PULL THROUGH’
Upbeat report on PM by his stand-in Global outpouring of good wishes But he may be off work for a month
DOMINIC Raab last night said Boris Johnson would ‘pull through’ after his condition in intensive care stabilised.
the Foreign Secretary gave a cautiously optimistic update, saying the Prime Minister was in good spirits and breathing without assistance.
He had received standard oxygen treatment at St thomas’ hospital in London on Monday night.
the Queen yesterday led an outpouring of goodwill towards Mr Johnson, wishing him a ‘speedy recovery’ and sending a personal message to his pregnant fiancee Carrie Symonds and wider family.
Mr raab, who is deputising for the absent PM, declared: ‘i’m confident he’ll pull through because if there’s one thing i know about this Prime Minister, he’s a fighter and he’ll be back at the helm leading us through this crisis in short order.’
in a statement issued last night, no 10 said: ‘the Prime Minister’s condition is stable and he remains in intensive care for close monitoring. He is in good spirits.’
But, with Mr Johnson heading for a second night in intensive care with coronavirus, senior tories privately remained cautious about predicting a speedy return to the frontline. One said: ‘it still feels like a very dangerous moment. i don’t think any of us will be able to relax until he is out of intensive care and clearly on the mend.’
Medical experts warned it could
take at least a month for the Prime Minister to make a full recovery.
And there are fears his extended absence could leave a power vacuum as Britain enters the most critical phase of the outbreak.
Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove, who described the situation as ‘truly frightening’, is also self-isolating after a close relative began to show symptoms of Covid-19.
The speed of Mr Johnson’s decline, which saw him transferred to intensive care on Monday evening after ten days with ‘mild’ symptoms, has sent shockwaves through Government. Yesterday, Downing Street moved to quash speculation that the PM had contracted pneumonia.
No 10 insisted he had had ‘standard oxygen treatment’ and had not required treatment on a ventilator at any point, nor any ‘non-invasive respiratory support’.
This suggests Mr Johnson is not on a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure machine, which is more intense than an oxygen mask but a stage down from a ventilator.
As the UK daily toll jumped by a record 786 to 6,159 hospital deaths:
The Government’s chief scientific adviser pointed to ‘signs of hope’, with new infections and hospital cases ‘flattening off’;
Ministers rallied round Mr Raab, with one saying he would not face factionalism;
The Chief Medical Officer conceded the Government had ‘a lot to learn’ from Germany and its mass testing policy;
AstraZeneca and GlaxoSmithKline joined forces to create a laboratory at Cambridge University to boost testing capacity;
Mr Raab suggested there would no early relaxation of the lockdown;
Almost one in ten care homes have had cases of the virus with families urged not to put their loved ones in residential homes;
The PM’s chief aide Dominic Cummings remains in self-isolation more than a week after developing symptoms;
Downing Street clarified Mr Raab’s powers as the Prime Minister’s temporary deputy, saying that he had the authority to order the military defence of the UK, but could not hire and fire ministers;
Pressure grew on ministers to reopen schools after a study by University College London found they made little difference to the spread of the virus;
The Road Haulage Association warned the industry may need to be nationalised;
Vicars were urged to stop live-streaming services in case it encouraged visits in person to church;
The equivalent of 195million global jobs will be lost in working hours, according to the International Labour Organisation;
One in 20 deaths in England and Wales is now linked to coronavirus.
Medical experts last night said the fact Mr Johnson had not needed a ventilator was an encouraging sign. Dr Jon Bennett, president of the British Thoracic Society, said: ‘I’m heartened that he’s on a normal oxygen delivery system, and let’s hope that it’s the peak of his illness.’
Latest figures from the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre suggest that survival rates for patients who do not need ventilator treatment in the first 24 hours are double those who do, with roughly 70 per cent pulling through.
However, experts warned it could take months for the PM to make a full recovery.
Professor Paul Hunter, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, said patients ill enough for intensive care would need ‘some time to recover’. He added: ‘I would expect most people who were that ill, to need at least a month or possibly two.’
THEY were the words which helped a frightened nation to look beyond the torment and the pain towards a happier future. Certainly, if any one song could be said to define the spirit of wartime Britain, it was We’ll Meet Again by Vera Lynn.
Eight decades later, 24 million of us sat down on Sunday night to watch the Queen reassure a country beset by dark clouds once more.
And we heard Her Majesty conclude one of the most historic speeches of her reign not with words from Shakespeare or the Bible or Churchill or an illustrious forebear. Instead, she quoted Vera Lynn: ‘We will meet again.’
Which is why the Daily Mail is proud to lead a campaign to get the whole of Britain joining together to sing this modern classic — now soaring back up the charts — once again . . . and in unison.
Exactly one month from today, two momentous chapters in the modern story of Britain will coincide. May 8 is the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe, VE Day, that euphoric moment when peace returned to a country shattered but unbowed.
Designated as a special Bank Holiday, this anniversary was to have been marked with a series of national events, culminating in the Daily Mail’s spectacular VE Day concert at the Royal Albert Hall. All that is now off. No one knows where we will be in our fight against Covid-19 by then.
Powerful
However, there is not the slightest prospect of a grateful nation embracing the wartime generation come May 8. That is for the simple reason that the Government’s 12-week isolation for the old and vulnerable will still be in force.
Though we may not be able to cheer them in person, that doesn’t mean we cannot try to cheer them up. In the process, we will be boosting the mood of the entire country. So, the plan is a very simple one.
Come 9pm on the evening of VE Day, the Mail — supported by Dame Vera herself — wants the whole country to throw open its windows and doors and sing We’ll Meet Again at the top of our voices.
Don’t worry about the words because we will be printing those in full in the Mail between now and then.
Don’t worry about the music, either. Come the night, BBC One will be broadcasting the original soundtrack as part of its VE Day coverage so just turn on the telly, clear your throats and channel your inner Vera Lynn. You, too, can be a Forces Sweetheart for a minute or two.
The idea has certainly met with the hearty approval of the Government and of our veterans’ organisations.
Dame Vera has long been an ambassador for SSAFA, the Armed Forces charity. Its chief executive, Sir Andrew Gregory, believes that her words remain as powerful today as they were when she first sang them in 1939.
‘ Her ability to raise the morale of the troops, and indeed the nation, has been remembered ever since,’ he said last night.
‘Hence it is wholly fitting that we bring her song to life for VE Day 75. I know she will be proud to see her song unite the nation once again, particularly at a time when we are physically isolated.’
The Royal British Legion is also calling on its members to spread the word and prepare to sing.
Written by Ross Parker and Hughie Charles, the original was recorded by Vera Lynn at the outbreak of the war. She did it in a single take.
A singer since the age of seven, she had risen to prominence with the Joe Loss Orchestra and recorded her first solo record in 1936, Up the Wooden Hill to Bedfordshire.
But We’ll Meet Again struck an instant chord. By 1940, she had been christened the ‘Forces’ Sweetheart’, a label that stuck and which she still wears with pride at the Sussex home where, last month, she celebrated her 103rd birthday.
In 1943, Columbia Pictures turned the song We’ll Meet Again into a semi- autobiographical film of the same name starring Vera Lynn as an up-and- coming singer called Peggy Brown. Yet no one could ever say that the fame went to her head, as she ploughed on, touring the garrison camps and munitions factories.
Sentimental
A year later, she was in the thick of the Burma campaign, singing at the front on the eve of the Battle of Kohima. As she told the Telegraph years later, it was just her and 6,000 troops who ‘ behaved like gentlemen’ throughout.
One morning, she awoke to find four Japanese prisoners leaning against her hut. ‘The look I got,’ she recalled. ‘I was this young girl walking by in khaki shorts. I shouldn’t think they had ever seen a white girl.’ There were many hits, not least Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs Of Dover and A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley
Square. Yet We’ll Meet Again always received the most requests — and still does.
Innocent, benign, shamelessly sentimental, it might seem an unlikely war anthem.
Indeed, in the early stages of the war, there was a campaign by some of the more Blimpish members of the Establishment to have soppy ‘slush’ like this kicked off the airwaves in favour of more ‘virile’ material.
At one point, they succeeded as the BBC’s Dance Music Policy Committee took Vera Lynn’s regular Sunday night show off the air. She was soon back by popular demand.
There is not even a hint of martial spirit, let alone belligerence in her signature tune. Unlike the two great hits of World War I — Pack Up Your Troubles and It’s A Long Way To Tipperary — you could not possibly march to it.
Eternal
Yet there are few songs which can so readily bring a lump to the throat or a blink to the eye, especially among those of a certain age.
However, as the Queen put it so eloquently in her broadcast, all those engaged on the front line today are as worthy of our esteem as those who saw Britain through the ‘different challenge’ of the war.
‘Those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any,’ she declared.
So why should we not all — young and old — share the same song? Since the Queen’s address on Sunday, it has already shot to Number 22 in iTunes chart and could be a candidate for Number 1 by May.
This will not just be a singsong for the elderly. All of us owe an eternal debt to those who led Britain and the free world to victory in 1945. We have cancelled the fetes, the street parties, the church services and the concerts.
It means we cannot give our old soldiers, sailors and aircrew — and the families who helped them through the war — the thanks and applause they so rightfully deserve. It means that we cannot gather to commemorate those who never made it home. So be it.
But then let us sing their song. Let us make it our own.
Even if it is just for one day, it will make us all feel better,
Because as those two indefatigable ladies have told us — and who would quibble with Her Majesty and Dame Vera? — we really do know we’ll meet again some sunny day.
For further details and revised plans for the Mail’s VE Day concert and screenings, go to veday75.co.uk