No.142 - Three Bombs Go Off Under Boris!

Dear James,

Three bombs have just gone off under Boris Johnson. The first to explode was the Care Home bomb. That went off two days ago when it was found that the number of deaths in care homes throughout the UK have been consistently and massively understated. Government statistics admit to 217 cases so far but a specialist ‘Care Home Forum’ says that the real figure is probably in the region of 4000. Care Homes look after up to a million of our older population and so far they have been last in line for PPE masks and testing. Their staff have been almost totally unprotected and the result has been chaos. The number of deaths from this part of our population and their carers is set to go through the roof in the coming week. Keep your head down James! 

Yesterday, a second bomb, more incendiary than high explosive, but a bomb nonetheless, exploded. Mr Hancock’s promise that 70 tons of PPE would be arriving yesterday at Stansted, blew up in his face. The load has been delayed. It will be here in ‘a couple of days’! But this is just the latest example of Tory ‘boosterism’ gone wrong. The government is flailing around in the shrapnel bursts of its own making. 

But the biggest bomb to go off at the weekend was a UXB – for those of a non-militaristic disposition - an unexploded bomb. This bomb was dropped at the beginning of February and had a delay fuse installed. On Sunday morning, that delay fuse triggered. The Sunday Times accused the PM of wasting 38 crucial days between January 30th when the WHO issued its highest level of alert to the 20th March when Boris finally closed down pubs and restaurants. How did he get it so wrong?

It was basically a failure of leadership. Boris was complacent, hubristic and even arrogant. He was relishing the triumph of ‘getting Brexit Done’ and engaged in stripping his cabinet of challenge and talent. Simultaneously, he was preparing to enact the EU exit negotiations, that greatest act of self-harm on the British people in a century. On January 24th Matt Hancock announced that the coronavirus risk to the UK public was ‘low’. Boris missed five out of 7 Cobra meetings in that period and on February 13th he started a ‘working holiday’ at Chevening taking him out of the public eye for 12 days. By then many scientists believed that Coronavirus was going to be an unprecedented event. Boris wasn’t listening. He was with Carrie in Kent. 

In today’s ST, a senior adviser to Downing Street has come clean. ’And what you learn about Boris is he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends. It was like working for an old fashioned executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly what people feared he would be.’ 

A pandemic event has been seen as the major threat to the nation for many decades. In 2016 the government ran a 3-day pandemic exercise named Cygnus. It concluded that, in the event of a pandemic, the NHS would probably collapse and identified a long list of shortcomings amongst which were a lack of ventilators and PPE. The Cygnus Report was largely ignored.

James, other parts of the world are blessed with more responsible governments. Taiwan shut its borders and started testing immediately when Coronavirus struck. It has had 600 cases and only 6 deaths. South Korea was similar. In Germany they adopted a maximum testing and contact tracing policy early and had built up resilience over the years. Germany had 29 Intensive care beds per 100,000 people. The UK had six. Today, German coronavirus cases are 145,184. Deaths, 4,586. UK cases 120, 067. Deaths, 16,060. The figures are bombs in themselves. 

All of this could have been avoided if Boris had acted sooner. Locked away in his ideological bunker, he may be protecting himself from the bombs but soon he’ll have to come out and face the nation. The country is angry, James. Instead of that gallery of shameful boosterism and energy sapping, political self-justification called the daily press conference, let’s have some grip. The nation needs some real leadership and that can only come from a team of talented and competent individuals from across the political spectrum!  If this is a war, then let’s have a wartime cabinet. Yes, I mean a coalition!  

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent