‘Hard-hitting’ Covid report fails to pack a single punch
THE MPs’ report into the Covid crisis was shaming but omitted to name the perpetrators of “one of the most important public health failures” in UK history.
It concluded that thousands died needlessly through cock-ups and negligence – the failure to lock down in time, to close borders and the chaos of track and trace.
In the command centre, there was a “groupthink” mentality and fatalism – but by whom?
Faceless people in shadowy corners of abstract governmental structures.
The report paints a picture of maelstrom and miscommunication, of the elderly being an afterthought as they were sent to their deaths in some sick reality rerun of Logan’s Run.
Losses in care homes were among the highest in Europe but the loved ones of the dead can’t find justice in the why without the who.
In its 151 pages, there are images conjured of a pandemonium perpetuated by systematic failure and poor science, arrogance and tin ears.
This report lays bare a terrible crime committed but offers up unconditional discharge for the perpetrators of it, in not holding them individually accountable.
The headless chickens in charge of the funny farm of disorder haven’t been yanked by the neck and held aloft but instead allowed to carry on with impunity, wreaking havoc in our yard.
If this was a social worker whose failures led to a child dying or a butcher whose meat poisoned a customer, they would face reputational execution and ruin.
Yet the key villains of this piece – Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock and their bumbling scientific and policy advisers – face not one consequence of their deadly actions.
This is not about the benefit of hindsight, as Government mouthpieces love to say, but criminal lack of foresight, given that we witnessed the devastation caused by this virus from China to Italy before it hit our shores. It didn’t take a crystal ball to know we had to lock down, just a telly in a corner office relaying pictures of infected countries in meltdown.
But then came the impediment of British exceptionalism, implanted in the genes of the public schooled and privileged, who fill the rank and file of all echelons of power in this country.
A virus could never devastate our glorious nation, when we can just sing Rule Britannia jolly loud until it all goes away.
That same racist, jingoistic disease brought us Brexit, which is giving us a relentless kicking as we remain floored by this pandemic.
Cabinet Office Minister Stephen Barclay was asked a dozen times to apologise over the handling of the pandemic and refused. After all, nowhere is his culpability written down.
The fact the efficiency of the vaccine roll-out was praised in the report only adds to the frustration, given it could have been a sledgehammer to a nut, if we had acted swiftly enough to minimise the crisis.
This report appears impactful but it will generate only headlines, not change. It didn’t even go into the specifics of the approaches of each nation, so the Scottish Government escaped a bullet, too.
Its authors, former Conservative Cabinet Ministers, have rocked the boat without disturbing the captain, so Johnson will go on unimpeded.
In this parallel world created by cult, populist leaders like Johnson, the truth is an irrelevance and this report is a masterstroke in appearing to be hard-hitting while not packing a single punch.
All the worst offenders in this sorry mess carry on, acting against our collective interest – unpunished, unanswerable and shamefully unashamed.