No. 144 - Booster Boris is Back!

Dear James,

So he’s back. Booster Boris, pneumatically reconfigured to reventilate his sorry parade of jaded ministers, is back amongst us, eager for the natural sympathy we have all allowed him following his recent near death experience. Welcome back Boris for your second electoral honeymoon. Don’t get carried away though. It won’t last. 

Yesterday at the rostrum outside Downing Street, Boris relaunched himself to the British public. Relaxed and fluffily uncoiffed, he was clearly relishing his return to full cuddly bear mode, although this was clearly designed to be a cuddly bear with a spine of steel. Boris had clearly chosen the ‘hero narrative’ as the theme for his relaunch. Being a survivor himself, he began by thanking the true heroes of the current crisis, the NHS. This organisation, massively underfunded for a decade by his own party, has moved heaven and earth to make us all safer. To this everyone would agree. But then, with perfect sleight of hand, Boris segued imperceptibly into his ‘mugger metaphor’. Covid 19 was like a mugger that had crept up behind us and is not yet tamed. With his right arm pumping out manufactured conviction, Boris told us, ’and now we must wrestle him to the ground’.  With one journalistic sleight of hand he had transferred the notion of hero from the NHS to himself. Nice one Boris. Here was the new Churchill leading our world of innocent victims to fight the good fight against this unprecedented scourge. 

Behind all this, of course, is the black mind of Mr Cummings. I can hear Boris’s Senior Adviser whispering behind the No.10 door, ‘Get on to the front foot Boris! Play to your strengths! Do your Churchill!” Without Mr Cummings (and Mr Churchill, of course!) Boris would be nothing. Boris knows this and Mr Cummings knows this. And both know that he who controls the narrative controls the gullible. 

Yesterday there was hardly a mention of the appalling month we have just been through. No mention of the 20,000 dead in hospitals, not a hint of the further 4,000 thousand dead in our desperately neglected care homes, not a moment of regret for the 100 plus NHS doctors and nurses who have given their lives. Not the slightest hint of apology. One month after lockdown, countless nursing homes and doctors are still without adequate PPE, there are still only 37,000 tests per day when 100,000 were promised by Thursday and most applicants are being told they’ve run out of test kits. There is no excuse for this massive delay in responding. Covid 19 did not creep up on us James. It arrived in plain sight with at least one month’s notice and yet in that month Boris boasted about how happy he was to shake the hands of Covid 19 patients, attended a rugby match at Twickenham and then disappeared with his fiancée to Chevening for 12 days for a spot of rest and recuperation. Asleep at the wheel? He wasn’t even in the vehicle! Mid-February to mid-March was a lost month and, as a result, thousands have died. 

That leaves much for Mr Johnson and your government to answer for James. For a decade the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) has been warning government that a pandemic was the number one threat to our nation. In 2019 it said a pandemic could infect up to 50% of the population, generate up to 65,600 deaths and cost the UK £2.35tn. The civil service even drew up a plan to deal with this threat but no one was made responsible for delivering it. It was neglected because Boris’s government was focussed on ‘Getting Brexit Done’. Referring to a lack of stockpiles of PPE, tests and other resources last week, a source in the civil service said, “We have been paying for a third-party fire and theft insurance, not a comprehensive one. We have been caught out.”

So despite yesterday’s relaunch, nothing has changed for Boris. Last week we were told that he would not ask for an extension to the December 1st deadline on the EU negotiations despite the probability that the piling of financial sorrow of a WTO crash out upon the financial sorrow of the post coronavirus reckoning (borrowings of £250bn this year as against £65bn last year) would do even more damage to our nation. The world has changed for good James and yet Boris and Cummings are still focussed on yesterday’s Kamikaze agenda of Brexit. Sounds a bit like shooting yourself in the head to cure a headache James? 

So I’m afraid, that yesterday’s relaunch was just more of the same, James. Our nation is looking for leadership and all it gets is a PR stunt, presenting the positives and ignoring the negatives.  Come off it Boris! The nation needs honesty and openness, not an exercise in ‘boosting the brand’ for the gullible.  

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent