BLOWBACK GROWS OVER U.K. DEATHS
Johnson’s claim of success criticized as toll tops 30,000
For Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, the political risks of running up the worst death toll in Europe from the coronavirus became starkly clear on Wednesday in a near-empty House of Commons, where he faced off for the first time against the new leader of the opposition, Keir Starmer.
Citing new statistics that suggest Britain, with more than 30,000 deaths, may have overtaken even hardhit Italy, Starmer asked Johnson how he could claim “apparent success” in the response to the outbreak, as he did last week after he returned from his own serious bout with the virus.
“That is not success — or apparent success,” Starmer said, his words hanging in the silence of a normally boisterous chamber. “Can the prime minister tell us, how on earth did it come to this?”
Johnson replied that direct country-to-country comparisons were difficult and that the true human cost of the pandemic would only be clear after it was over. While statisticians generally agree with that assessment, Johnson implicitly acknowledged its weakness as a political argument.
“He’s right to draw attention to the appalling statistics, not just in this country but of course around the world,” Johnson said.
He tried to deflect attention from the death statistics by throwing out another number: 200,000 virus tests a day by the end of May. That is double the target the government set for April, which it reached on the last day of the month but has since fallen to below 70,000 — a failure that Starmer also pointed out.
For Starmer, a humanrights lawyer who was elected leader of the Labour Party last month, it was a sure-footed debut against Johnson in Prime Minister’s Questions, a weekly ritual that usually unfolds in a rowdy din, as backbenchers whoop for their leader and rain catcalls on the other side.
The pandemic has forced Parliament to allow lawmakers to attend remotely for the first time in its history, leaving Johnson and Starmer to face each other as if in a legal deposition rather than a freewheeling political arena.
The quiet setting worked to the opposition leader’s advantage: With a subdued, forensic style, he pressed Johnson on lethal conditions in nursing homes; shortages of masks and gloves for health workers; and Britain’s decision to abandon testing and contact tracing in the early days of the contagion.