You may have heard Labour leader Keir Starmer referring to ‘Hannah’ during last week’s PMQs. Hannah is Hannah Brady, whose key worker father Shaun died of Covid in May 2020. Shaun’s death certificate was signed on 20 May 2020, the day on which Boris Johnson attended a Bring Your Own Bottle (BYOB) piss up at 10 Downing Street. Hannah described Johnson as “taking the British public for fools”. Just a bit. My concern is this: if a new, possibly fatal, variant of Covid turns up, how will the public, who were heroic during previous lockdowns, react?
Ms Brady has a view on that, too: “If [Boris Johnson] announces a lockdown because a new variant comes out, no-one will listen to him and why should they?” And she’s absolutely right.
The country was already weary of Covid before Johnson’s partying during previous lockdowns came to light. Whilst most of us accepted the need to keep everyone safe, our physical and mental health suffered. We’ve been saying, for a very long time, that the last thing most of us need is another lockdown. Now, under Johnson, and whoever succeeds him, unless bodies are piled up on the streets, as Johnson once suggested they could be, people won’t have it.
Can you imagine a TV announcement, with Johnson flanked by Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty, saying, “You must stay at home”, as he did back in March 2020? The near unanimous response of the Great British public would be a Life of Brian reaction. “Fuck off!”
It turned out that Johnson was laughing at us all along. Laughing at me, laughing at you, laughing at Hannah Brady, laughing at the Queen; laughing at everyone. And why? Because he is a seriously unpleasant person. It is perhaps unfortunate that the public’s belated realisation that Johnson was a wrong ‘un but I suppose better late than ever. If only we had realised before the EU referendum in 2016, but that ship has long sailed and as with so many other things, the country will have to live with the consequences of Johnson’s ghastly political career, like the 170,000 lost to Covid while he partied into the night.
It’s when you see the stories like Hannah Brady’s you see the human side of all this. It is said all political careers end in failure. If this is how we remember Johnson, the end can’t come quick enough.
