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In a few short weeks, I fear that Boris Johnson will be appearing behind his Downing Street lectern, flanked by Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, to announce that the final restrictions will not, after all, be lifted. The soaring Covid infection numbers, caused by Johnson’s failure to stop thousands of people from India importing the highly transmissible Delta variant, will surely see to that. And while the numbers of deaths remain low the rapid spread will cause havoc around England. Here’s how.
The vaccines are doing a wonderful job in preventing hospitalisations and deaths, but they don’t stop people getting ill, sometimes very ill. In other words, you can still catch the virus after your double dose of a vaccine and it can make you feel pretty awful. And if you live, work, socialise with anyone else, they will be told to self-isolate, even if they show negative tests and show no symptoms. Johnson will need people to be honest when they have symptoms by going to get tested and by staying at home, often without any income, for a 10 day period. The messaging will be led by his health secretary.
All of which makes Johnson’s initial decision to accept Matt Hancock’s apology for swabbing his lover’s throat with his tongue so risible. The rules which prevent people saying goodbye in person to sick relatives or to hug one another at funerals did not, according to Johnson, apply to his health secretary who helped formulate the rules in the first place. Can you imagine Hancock’s next appearance at a government press conference, imploring people to observe his ‘hands, face, space’ rule, without seeing that inescapable image of Hancock in a ‘steamy clinch’ with his advisor? Either Johnson thought that Hancock could smarm his way through the press conference or he felt it was nothing more than tittle-tattle and that rules were only for the lower orders. Actually, I think it was both.
It seems incredible that it took a sex scandal to unseat Hancock who has been one of the main villains of the government’s disastrous response to the Covid pandemic. Let’s look at the charge sheet:
- Hancock forced NHS workers to wear bin bags because of the lack of PPE.
- He sent back many thousands of untested care home residents home from hospital to die and then lied about protecting them.
- Over 150,000 people have died on his watch.
- His mates made millions, perhaps billions, by being handed lucrative taxpayer-funded contracts.
But it is one rule for us and no rules for them. Even the Queen had to sit alone at Prince Philip’s funeral by way of government order, a sight that even those of us who don’t care much the royal family found heartbreaking. Michael Gove goes to the Champions League final in Portugal but doesn’t need to self-isolate when he gets home. Johnson and Hancock allow 2500 suits from UEFA to attend the Champions League final at Wembley Stadium without needing to quarantine. And of course we all know about Johnson’s former mate Dominic Cummings galavanting away to Barnard Castle at the height of the pandemic.
Now, it will be the turn of Sajid Javid to tell the country how to behave in the coming days, weeks, months and probably years. It won’t end well.
People have had enough of lockdowns, restrictions and all the rest of it. More than that, they have had enough of the upper orders doing their own thing while the rest of us struggle and suffer. Dominic Cummings holiday at Barnard Castle followed by his wife’s birthday treat – sorry, his eyesight driving test – saw the levee breached. Now the levee is broken, beyond repair. Don’t fool yourself into believing that everyone has loyally followed Johnson and Hancock’s rules from the start: they haven’t. I know of countless people, among them NHS professionals, who have never bothered with the rules from the very start. Whilst many of us have been tested on numerous occasions, many more have carried on as if nothing has happened. The only difference now is that they will be joined by a far larger number of people who are sick to the back teeth of the do as I say, not as I do attitude of Johnson and his clown car government.
Along the continuation of restrictions, Johnson’s failure to prevent flights coming in from India until it was far too late will, I fear, destroy any remaining possibility of people being able to enjoy a foreign holiday this year.
I have been amazed how placid the British public has become. Their love for Boris the clown is greater than their desire for competent government acting in their interests. As long as they see their hero deliberately scruffing up his badly hut hair, wearing an ill-fitting suit, using funny words and expressions and lying through his teeth to them, they’re happy. If he murdered a disabled pensioner and stole his life savings, people would still say, ‘Ah, but that’s Boris.’ They love Johnson but I suspect the love won’t extend to following rules that don’t apply to him.
For most people, Covid is nearly over even though it isn’t. Johnson’s relentless faux optimism has fuelled that feeling for over a year now and there’s no going back. And Cockgate, as Andrew Rawnsley describes Door Matt’s ‘steamy clinch’ in today’s Observer, is the nail in the coffin of lockdowns and restrictions.
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