This appalling government has failed dismally in the face of the pandemic

There being no honour among thieves, Dominic Cummings has well and truly let the cat out of the bag.

Do I believe him? In full? No, of course not; no more than I believe that inveterate liar Doris Johnson. I have not  forgotten the Brexit slogan that leaving the EU would save us £350 million a week, which could go to the NHS.  That was a complete porkie. Who was its author?  Cummings.

However, the Cummings interview on 26th May has served to give added credence to all that we knew or suspected.

Doris Johnson put on his mock genuine sadness face and expressed his condolences for the Covid dead, now approaching 2 million. As Prime Minister, he, of course, accepted responsibility for all that the government has done. But he has yet to accept responsibility for all that was not done by his  government:

The failure to take advantage of our country being a collection of islands and therefore easier to defend against invasions no matter whether by Napoleon, Hitler or Covid virus. Not until the end of January 2021  have our points of entry been closed and, even then, properly supervised quarantine for our own nationals coming home is not assured.

The failure to ensure proper funding for the NHS, leaving us pitifully ill-prepared for the arrival of the pandemic:  too little PPE, too few doctors and nurses, too little specialised respiratory apparatus, too few hospital beds, the structure of local  directors of public health  dismantled in order to save money.

Billions have now been spent on compensating businesses and providing benefits for those laid off or on furlough, but even more billions have been spent or squandered on desperate attempts to buy PPE from people who turned out to be crooks, on the totally failed test and trace scheme and on the Nightingale hospitals.

 

The late commencement of the first lockdown, which resulted in hundreds of deaths which could have been avoided.

The day after Cummings’ appearance before the Select Committee, Johnson denied that delays in declaring lock-downs had cost lives and yet the government’s scientific advisers have said that Johnson’s reluctance to shut down the nation, for fear of the impact on the economy and unpopularity with the public, cost tens of thousands of lives. 

Hancock, the Health Secretary, denied that Covid-infected people were released from hospitals into care homes.  Unfortunately, the limpid Opposition did not challenge him on this. Care homes had the biggest concentration of Covid deaths, precisely because residents returned from hospitals carrying the disease.  This must be an example of what Cummings described as Hancock’s multiple lies.

The failure to roll-out broadband to the whole country and to ensure all children had access to computer equipment needed for home-schooling.

The failure to ensure all children are adequately fed.

The failure to provide clarity over school examinations and closure and re-opening.

 

The Tories are ideologically locked-in to the principle of privatisation and so major contracts  have been handed to companies of proven uselessness, like SERCO, Compass, Carillion, G4S etc. and ministers’ cronies who are not qualified to undertake the work, but well practiced at trousering tax-payers money.

The Tories could not possibly admit that their decade-long, totally unnecessary austerity set the stage for failure to deal with the pandemic adequately and explains why our death toll puts us in the same league as Trump’s America, while much smaller countries, like Vietnam, New Zealand, Israel and Cuba have had much greater success at protecting their people. The public inquiry planned for  next year should start NOW, while lessons can be applied to the continuing pandemic. People are still catching the virus and people are still dying from it.

Keir Starmer should lead his MPs out of the Commons until Doris accepts an immediate start of the Inquiry.  This would be the first national strike of MPs and there is no better issue on which to take demonstrative action: saving lives.

Doris has luxuriated in the credit for the vaccines.  The credit does not belong to him.  It goes to the scientists who developed the vaccines and to the NHS for administering the injections.

Doris is hoping that, by the time of the next election, the public will have forgotten Dominic Cummings and the dog’s breakfast the government  has made of dealing with the pandemic.

 

Unfortunately, he is right: the public will have forgotten all about it. I despair of them