That was the judgement of Max Hastings, journalist and historian, in June 2019, former boss of Boris Johnson at the Daily Telegraph.

The former editor described Johnson as lazy and a liar.

We saw some of that in Johnson’s  much-hyped Sunday 10th May peak-time broadcast.  He made a quarter-hour TV presentation feel more like a very long half -hour. It was shallow and patronising; an insult to the intelligence of the British public.  It had a well-deserved bad press on  Monday morning.

Surely, such a rambling, fumbling speech had not been seen by the Cabinet.

For something so crucial, should it not have been considered at a virtual meeting of the full Cabinet?

On key questions we heard nothing.

Could there not have been a greater effort to have the United Kingdom continue a united response to the crisis?

Why was there a call for a return to work with only 12 hours notice?

Was there confidence that, on Monday morning,  public transport would be able to  cope safely with the consequential  massive increase in passenger  numbers?

Why was there a call to return to work before the promised work-place safety guidelines had been published?

Can we be assured, with no more fibs and obfuscation that there is now enough PPE, of an adequate standard for all hospital and care home needs and for domiciliary care staff?

I think we know the answer to that question.

What is the true position on testing? Why have all the targets and dates been make-believe?

When might we have immunity testing?

When might we have a vaccine or a new treatment drug?

What is the SAGE (Science Advisory Group) advice on loosening the lockdown before there is a vaccine?

Has the government abandoned its own five tests?

Or is the government confident that the 5 tests have been met and will remain met when the expected second surge arises?

What is being done about the disproportionate death rate among ethnic minority members of the public and NHS staff?

Before there is any re-opening of schools, will there be such a level of testing and other precautions that we can be sure the move will not result in more widespread infection?

Why is our death rate the highest in Europe and second only to the USA, which has no health service worthy of the name, thanks to Trump’s ditching of Obamacare?

We are told there have been  31,587 Covid deaths up to 10th May. Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University claimed in a BBC Andrew Marr interview that this figure is fictional, the real figure being much higher.

What is the real figure?

Covid testing figures are largely make-believe.  Some one-day figures for tests completed and results issued have included test kits sent out and not yet returned, let alone processed. Our test processing provision is so inadequate that samples are being sent to the US, which has plentiful chaos of its own.

What is the true testing position?

The PPE story would be a sick joke were its results not so tragic.

Remember the massive supply of PPE coming from Turkey?

“It will be here tomorrow(Sunday),” said Robert Jenrick (who was that day’s patsy during Johnson’s absence)at the Downing Street press conference on 18 April.  It turned out to be an Alice in Wonderland jam tomorrow tale. The PPE did not arrive on the morrow (Monday). It did not arrive on Tuesday. Finally, on Wednesday, the RAF went to collect it. The quantity turned out to be only one-tenth of the quantity we had been told to expect and, on being checked,  it was found to be sub-standard and unusable. Meanwhile, front-line staff were dying for lack of proper protection when dealing with infected patients.

Will anyone ever be held responsible for this debacle? Who, in Downing Street, was concocting this string of lies?  Was it Dominic Cummings?  Was the PM being briefed on this sad saga?

Some of the totally inadequate stockpile of PPE held here was found to be well past its sell-by date and therefore unusable. A Tesco’s Saturday boy shelf-stacker could have kept an eye on that.

As Mark Twain said: “There are lies,  damned lies and statistics. The British people are being bamboozled by politicians’ manipulation of statistics in order to cover up the country’s appalling and unforgivable  unpreparedness for this pandemic.

Will the British public remember all this when the next election comes around?  Will they make the Tories pay for it? Will they remember that tens of thousands paid with their lives for the policies of this government?

At the next election, let’s hope that all intending Tory voters understand that, in order to best serve the country, they should –

Stay at home, Protect the NHS and Save Lives.

 

Some kindly folk will say we have to make allowance for the fact that Covid-19 is a new virus and a particularly virulent one, which took the whole world by surprise.

But as my earlier Covid  blogs have explained, this is  only the most recent of a string of pandemics to strike since 1960, even if we say the 1918 one was too long ago to count.  The WHO and our own epidemiologists have advised that we must always be prepared for outbreaks  of new viruses or known ones. Ten years of Tory austerity, starving the NHS and other public services, left us unprepared.  To make matters worse, the government was slow to react to the dire warnings coming from China and the WHO in January.

Why did we not close the borders, as other countries have done?

Was it because the government was unwilling to upset Richard Branson?

Why did it take 5 months to  get around to any kind of precautions at points of entry?  Since  the first warnings of Covid-19, 100,000 British and foreign travellers have been free to bring  god-knows-what into the country.

The likes of EasyJet, Ryanair, BA and Virgin will want a return to their old slapdash ways as soon as possible. Will they be allowed to resume importation of every disease under the sun?

 

South Korea was well prepared for this pandemic. Why not us?

The answers to that question lie somewhere in the mixture of arrogance,  incompetence, idleness and penny-pinching which typify our government and its policies.