At last Boris Johnson made one thing clear at his customary chaotic press conference last night: we should work from home AND attend the office Christmas party. It’s not safe to work in your office but it’s perfectly fine to get shit-faced in a small room with the people you shouldn’t mix with at work. I hope that makes sense. Certainly it makes as much sense as anything else Johnson said yesterday.
Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance flanked Johnson at said press conference and both managed admirably to keep a straight face alongside a man who appeared to have cut his own hair. Basically, we needed to bring in Plan B, even if no one really knew what Plan A was, to slow down rates of Covid transmission. But we couldn’t stop it. We could just slow it down until it peaked. Far better to do something minor to prepare for when Johnson tells us to do something major, like closing the pubs.
I can’t believe things aren’t absolutely grim, far worse than we have been told they are. Whitty and Vallance never say what they want to say because they can’t. They’re present for advice, not actually running the country; just encouraging politicians to keep us alive. “Thank you for your views,” said Johnson. “We have noted your views. Now it’s time to partay.” And with yet another Johnson arriving this morning, you can bet that in some quiet part of Number 10, his friends will be gathering for a piss up which will of course be within the rules because you can have a piss up at the moment. You just can’t go to a nativity play at the local school.
I’ve no doubt that by the New Year we’ll be into Plan C which will be closer to an actual lockdown, but not a proper one because there will be no furlough this time. And the reason will be simple: if hospital numbers rise quickly, the NHS would be overrun with all the disastrous consequences that would cause. Only an idiot prime minister would provide over the collapse of the NHS, but then Boris Johnson is prime minister so we can’t be sure he won’t come up with a Plan C.
The thing is though that if the rest of the country is forced to lock down again, you’d like to think Number 10 would lock down too. I wouldn’t be on it, though.
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