No.146 - ‘The Biggest Failure in a Generation – Where did Britain Go Wrong?'

Dear James,

It sometimes takes friends outside the family to tell us the truth. Yesterday it became clear that more than 32,000 of our fellow citizens had so far died ‘before their time’ and that the UK now has the worst record for Coronavirus deaths in Europe.  And the rest of the world knows it. Yesterday, newspapers outside the UK such as the Sydney Morning Herald, carried headlines such as, ‘The Biggest Failure in a Generation–Where did Britain Go Wrong?’ Italy’s Corriere della Serra said the UK situation was, “like a nightmare from which you cannot awake, but in which you landed because of your own fault or stupidity”. Britain seemed to be “a prisoner of itself”. The opinion writer in the Italian daily said that the UK was hindered by “a very weak cabinet” and Johnson’s character: “He’s not Trump, though there is something similar in their approaches, but in this kind of challenge you need to really work hard on details. He’s not a details person.” Which I guess, is the reason why your ministers continue to dumfound us with their half truths, deviations and downright lies. They are the political debris revolving around the black hole of a leadership that reacted far too late and that, only now at the beginning of May, has begun to create something approaching a strategy. 

Back in January, Germany and the UK recorded their first coronavirus outbreaks within two days of each other – Germany on the 27th and the UK on the 29th. On March 16th the WHO told us all to ‘Test, Test, Test!’. By the end of that month the UK was registering a mere 10,000 tests per day while, in Germany, a single lab amongst 170 other testing labs, was doing 5,000 per day.  In mid-March we decided to abandon the ‘test and trace’ strategy recommended by the WHO. It was reinstated at the end of April. The charge list continues to grow by the day. Your government has consistently underfunded the NHS, was complacent when the bug struck, ignored the advice and help of international friends and has displayed the downright incompetence of a sub-standard cabinet chosen for loyalty to Boris rather than ability.  True to stereotypes, Germany was prepared and we weren’t. Germany had created its own in-house test by mid-January and this was made available to the world via the WHO on 17th of January. But the British decided to ‘make their own test’ which came out three weeks later. Yesterday the UK recorded more than 32,000 deaths, Germany fewer than 7,000. Need I say more? 

And yet your government, like some blundering carthorse blinkered to see only the ‘green pastures’ ahead, continues in its communication strategy of boosterism and blind optimism. Matt Hancock’s 100,000 tests by last Friday, artificially inflated to get him across the line, have since slumped to 69,463 yesterday. Today we are told that all those frantic efforts to get PPE in from Turkey two weeks ago had resulted in a warehouse full of millions of protective gowns that are substandard. In February and March 18,000 airline passengers were allowed into the UK from Europe without any testing. And then, perhaps the biggest error of all, was your failure to identify the half a million elderly in care homes across the country together with their hundreds of thousand of professional carers, as the most vulnerable of all.  Boris put the country on lockdown on March 23rd but the focus was on the NHS. Despite your ministers’ claims, care homes were peripheral.  Perhaps the integration of the NHS and the care home sector will be the one biggest medical positive to come out of this crisis? 

And when confronted with this sorry list of error, misjudgement and miscommunication, what has been your government’s response? “This is an unprecedented global pandemic and we have taken the right steps at the right time to combat it, guided by the best scientific advice”. And it gets worse. “The government has been working day and night to battle coronavirus, delivering a strategy designed to protect our NHS and save lives". Oh boy! Does the word, ‘chutzpah' come to mind? 

James, your government and party are in a crisis of credibility.  Hancock has ‘political death’ written across his forehead but it is Boris who leads your band of sorry men. His ‘advance Britannia’ pretensions have been revealed as little more than ‘Little Englander ‘myopia. And it is all summed up in a single figure. 32,313 deaths and climbing. 

That will not be forgotten James. We really should have listened to our friends. 

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent