The British electorate has a notoriously short memory. This is good for Doris Johnson.  As the success of the Covid vaccines rolls out, his government will claim credit for it.

All egregious Covid errors will be forgotten or forgiven, as will the Downing Street sleaze.

There was his failure to close our borders at the outbreak of the pandemic.  There was his failure to stop the mass gatherings at the Cheltenham festival and the Anfield football international, resulting in infection spikes in those areas.

He dithered over the first lockdown and he resisted his fellow ministers’ call for another lockdown, as the second wave of the epidemic took hold in September 2020.

These mistakes cost a  death-toll measured in tens of thousands.

Have we already forgotten all those deaths?

In India we have a right-wing  obscurantist Hindu nationalist regime led by an idiot, Narendra Modi who is responsible for Trump-like fantasising over the pandemic, at a cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Will the electorate of India remember the present chaos and give the sack to this dangerous buffoon, who has allowed and fostered mass political rallies and religious gatherings, where viral infection has spread like wildfire?

Between April 2020 and January 2021, instead of stock-piling oxygen reserves, learning from the crisis in supply being experienced in Britain and other countries,  Modi allowed the export of 9,000 metric tonnes of oxygen, so that the India’s  billionaires got even richer.

India’s richest 1 per cent hold 73 per cent of the country’s wealth.

India’s massive Serum Institute has been mass-producing the Astra-Zeneca vaccine and exporting it. Making money is the name of the game, not saving Indians from the virus.

India is home to two of the biggest vaccine producers in the world, but 80 per cent of their production has gone abroad to countries able to pay top-dollar for it. Has Modi requisitioned supplies, so that his own people get their fair share?  No. such morality is alien to his retrogressive religion and politics.

India is beaten only by the USA and China in spending on its military, including nuclear weapons. Its communications industry has put 49 satellites in orbit. All this and yet most Indians have no lavatory.

As with armaments, India is behind only the USA and China in respect of the number of home-grown billionaires. They are far from renowned for their charitable generosity and Prime Minister Modi is not going to tax them for the sake of the domestic health services, not even in the present crisis.

In spite of all this, it would be lunacy to leave India to its own devices. The lesson of Polio and Smallpox is that such viral diseases can be eradicated only if eradicated EVERYWHERE. If a pocket of the virus is left in some remote corner, it is liable to spring back at any time.

It is unlikely that Covid can be eradicated world-wide. It exists in too many related types and too readily mutates into variants. But it could be controlled provided a high enough proportion of the world’s population is vaccinated against all mutant forms of the virus.

DORIS is currently hosting the G7 and here is his opportunity to be on the side of humanity, rather than big business.

He should propose that all vaccines be declared patent-free, their formulae available for mass production anywhere.

The G7 countries should be mobilised to ensure all countries in the global south have the equipment, drugs and vaccines they need, in order to be on a par with the wealthier countries of the global north.

And while Doris has Modi in his sights at the G7, he should sit him down to watch the heart-rending newsreels from India which we have seen on our TV. He should then demand to know what Modi is going to do about it, apart from resigning immediately, so that somebody more capable can take over.