One year on

It was a year ago to the day when life in the UK changed forever. We were addressed on live TV by a performing clown, a second-rate journalist, dabbling as a chat show host and after dinner speaker, who told us we must stay at home. Most of us did stay at home, unlike Boris Johnson’s chief advisor, the de facto prime minister Dominic Cummings, who drove a car load of COVID-19 from London to Durham against the rules he helped draw up. A year ago, 364 people had died of the virus, now it’s over 125,000; probably much more than that. And Johnson wants a minute’s silence at noon today? I don’t think so.

I am going to be brutally honest here: Johnson is part of the wider story. Because he locked down far too late last year, because he opened things up to quickly, with gimmicks like chancellor Sunak’s ‘Eat Out to Die’ (it was so long ago, I may have not got the actual name right), locking down too late again, opening up at Christmas and then – yes, you guessed it – locking down too late yet again, he has blood on his hands. His breathtaking incompetence led directly to the deaths of tens of thousands of people. “We did everything we could,” said Johnson. Yes, everything you could to avoid following the science.

We lost a close family member, I lost several friends and heard of countless others who died and have long COVID. Friends and acquaintances have lost loved ones, many more have lost their jobs. And millions of people have not been able to see in person those they love. Johnson said he would “wrestle the virus to the ground in 12 weeks”, that things would be back to normal by summer and then Christmas and now by this June. As ever, Johnson spoke a ghastly combination of lies and half-truths.

We clapped for carers and then saw NHS staff awarded a pay rise so small it represented a pay cut and carers were awarded no pay rise at all. Johnson said one thing and then meant another.

At midday, we are supposed to be having a minute’s silence and at 8.00pm standing at our doorsteps with a candle to remember those who died. I offer no criticism, particularly for the latter which has been organised by the end of life charity Marie Curie but you won’t find me joining in either. I am tired and weary, not just at this endless lockdown, but with empty gestures. A minute’s silence and a candlelit vigil won’t bring anyone back, it won’t cure long COVID, it won’t end the scandals of poverty in our country, or the underfunding of our NHS, which Johnson and his friends still wish to flog off to the highest bidder.

Johnson, you may recall, said on 23rd March 2020 that he would review the lockdown measures in three weeks. 52 have gone by now and Johnson now warns of a further wave that will “wash up on our shores”, another way of saying yet more people will die and we’ll be locked down one way or another for months, perhaps years, to come.

Science has come galloping to the rescue and to that end, on the first anniversary of Johnson’s initial lockdown announcement, I am having my second Pfizer vaccine. And thanks to the jab, I will be able to do nothing more tomorrow than I can do today, except that I am less likely to die. Thank goodness for small mercies.

Any prime minister would have struggled with this coronavirus but surely none more than this one, the least suited prime minister we have had for a crisis in my lifetime. As PM, it was supposed to so different. Laughter at his jokes and appearance, put downs in the House of Commons and the country could rejoice in ‘Boris’, the everyman PM from Eton and Oxbridge. Well, he’s been found desperately wanting and has caused, by his actions, tens of thousands of additional deaths and still he and his party are miles clear in the polls.

You hold a minute’s silence if you want to, stand by your door with a fucking candle if it makes you feel good. I’ll get on with life, trying to stay sane and being kind to others. The effects of this virus have a long way to run, yet.