Today we begin a new phase of rhetoric where the government message to the people has changed. Replacing ‘Stay home. Protect the NHS, Save Lives’ we now have this:
Where to begin? How about last Wednesday?
This was when newspapers were briefed about how the current so-called ‘lockdown’ would be eased. This is not me suggesting the briefing occurred: it is me saying it did happen. Of course, it happened. The worst elements of the gutter press – and I include the Mirror in that sordid category – may have had different interpretations of what it was told, but I doubt it. If the prime minister’s chief advisor Dominic Cummings didn’t personally deliver the briefing, it would not have happened without his knowledge, without his say-so.
David Yelland, whose tweet heads this blog, was once the editor of the Sun so he knows better than most how the press works, how press briefings work. When he describes the briefing as ‘the worst communications error in this country of the whole pandemic’, it is hard to say he’s not right.
The government’s reckless mixed messaging continues apace with the latest Cummings slogan unveiled last night, in a leak of course, which now instructs us to ‘Stay alert. Control the virus. Save lives’. Cabinet minister Robert Jenrick, who a few short weeks ago managed a round trip of 150 miles to see his parents, said the government wants people to start getting back to work, which is why the ‘stay at home’ message is no longer appropriate, before telling Sophy Ridge on Sky that people should still ‘stay at home’. To add to the muddle, Jenrick then said he didn’t know the exact rate of infection in care homes although ‘we are passing through the peak’ of Covid-19 in care homes. Is this a new low? Or just par for the course?
The news from around the country suggests that the lockdown, such as it was, is now unravelling. Crowds gathered in various places, the police attended thousands of breaches to the social distancing instructions and, more disturbingly, A&E departments across the country were having to deal with injured drunks. I do not condone the actions of people who are knowingly breaking the rules and there has been a substantial degree of it since the pandemic swept the country but when the most popular newspapers in the land are leading with stories that have unquestionably been briefed by government officials, it is hard not to apportion some of the blame, if not quite a lot of it, to the messengers.
Why, for example, announce that Boris Johnson was going to address the nation on a Sunday evening about how the lockdown would be eased and then leak its contents in the days leading up to it, with ministers then sent out to start rowing back? Doubtless, Johnson who only does good news, will pluck a crowd-pleasing rabbit from his hat to cheer us all up, he thinks, but why do it this way? Because it’s news manipulation, controlling the agenda, telling us what they want us to know and believe. This time, as David Yelland says, they have got it terribly wrong.
Robert Jenrick tells us he wants us to go back to work at the same time as we stay at home. The message he says is the same but different. But the point is this: his government told us all to stay at home in the first place. Workers are not on furlough because they quite fancy sitting around at home all day: it’s because furlough is a jobs retention scheme to prevent people becoming unemployed. Workers did not introduce it: government did.
I hope that for once in his life Johnson will ditch the bullshit, bonhomie and the ludicrous rhetoric and be a real leader instead of a third rate chat show host and after dinner speaker. The infection rate is still incredibly high, as is the death rate. People are scared. They don’t just want spin and slogans, they want clear advice and guidance, they want to see what the future holds, they want strong, effective leadership.
However, I feel that the levee of public goodwill and cooperation has been broken now and it will be hard to fix it. The new slogan of ‘Stay Alert. Control the virus. Save lives’ is virtually meaningless. There is no specific message, in fact there is no message at all.
Ever since Covid-19 arrived on these islands, Boris Johnson’s government has been found wanting. It was badly prepared, it has been behind the curve at every stage. We now have the largest death toll in Europe and infections are still rising apace. And now it appears, the self-styled genius of spin, Dominic Cummings has overplayed his hand.
Johnson may yet save the day in his national address, but for something like half the population, who already regard him as nothing more than a liar, a chancer, a narcissist and a shyster, it’s way too late. Whether the other half still find the Boris character loveable and charming, it’s a matter for them. But I’m a little old fashioned and I’d rather we had a proper leader. Whatever you say about Johnson, he’s certainly not that.
