When the levee breaks

I didn’t think it would be possible to further plumb the depths of cynicism in politics. That is, until this afternoon when Boris Johnson announced, at breakneck speed, the government’s long overdue second lockdown. To no one’s surprise, except it seems Johnson, opening the country up again when COVID-19 was still very much present in the country has given us a second wave of the bloody thing. As I come to the end of my latest mental health therapy during the first lockdown, I could be making contact with the men, and women, in white coats very soon. But fear not. The Conservative party REALLY cares about poor mental health. Indeed, after Johnson’s speech, his backbenchers were passionate about the subject. Weren’t they?

I was unconvinced, I must say. Many MPs who spoke were the same ones who have consistently voted to slash spending on NHS mental health services since 2010. As soon as Andrea Leadsom rose to speak, I soon rumbled what was going on. It was all bullshit.

Leadsom and co were using people’s declining mental health as a cover for their real, so called libertarian agenda. The truth is that they don’t want to lock down at all and they are exploiting the area of mental health to make their case. It goes something like this. “I completely understand the PM’s reasons for locking down. He’s very sincere. We all love him. But businesses, including ours, are going to the wall. And people are going mental. So let’s let the virus run wild, lock up the old and sick and it will all end happy ever after, give and take the odd 50,000 deaths.”

Johnson, of course, agreed. No one supported mentally ill people more than him. He had only just spent £500 billion (or was it a tenner? It’s so hard to be sure) on mental health treatment for losers like, well, me. Why, we should be grateful at old Bozo’s generosity.

It was so superficial and so dishonest. In truth, Johnson and Leadsom were in full agreement. The only reason Johnson couldn’t go along with the demand to open everything up and kill people was because he wanted people to love him. He was the one who would get the bad press if the dying arrived at A&E and were told to go home and choke to death, not libertarians like Leadsom. She was merely supporting the mentally ill who she hadn’t known existed until this week. But oh how much she loved us.

I’m not quite at the stage where I just want to go to bed and stay there, but it can’t be long. Old codgers like me have already had the ‘mind how you go’ warning from the government, delivered not so much in a Ronnie Kray sort of way, more Alan Carr. But the message is still the same. The Leadsoms of this world want to open everything up and chain the rest of us to our bedroom radiators until this pesky virus has gone away. Eventually, they will get their way because we now know that the Chancer – sorry, Chancellor – Rishi Sunak was the man who blocked the brief September lockdown plan recommended by the SAGE committee.

I didn’t think for a single moment that the Tory party had suddenly become a party of love and affection to its mental citizens. Instead, it’s cynical backbenchers used us, as a lever by which they could foil lockdown. They failed this time, but I am not sure how long it will be until the levee breaks and they throw us to the wolves.