The Guardian view of Boris Johnson’s crisis: blunder
after blunder
Editorial
The distinctive British response to the
coronavirus pandemic is one of missed opportunities and dismal misjudgments
Published
onMon 15 Jun 2020 19.42 BST
When the story
of the coronavirus pandemic is written, the verdict on Boris Johnson’s
government is likely to be damning. Mr Johnson has made mistake after mistake,
for which the country has paid a very high price. The prime minister is right
in a sense that he presides over a “world-beating” performance: with 64,000
excess deaths, that is one excess death for every 1,000 people, the UK has
recorded the largest global spike in deaths compared with the average yearly
death toll; and the country will suffer the deepest depression of any developed
economy.
Such a
claim can be made because there’s no need to wait until all the facts are
known. The gaffes are hiding in plain sight. Britain does not require the
crisis to subside to analyse the country’s performance. The distinctive British
response to this global challenge is one of missed opportunities and dismal
misjudgments.
The UK went
into lockdown too late, a decision that the former government modeller Neil
Ferguson thinks has cost tens of thousands of lives – because the higher the
coronavirus infection rate when restrictions were imposed, the higher the death
rate. Then the country shut down its testing regime too soon, leaving it unable
to track the speed and spread of the virus. During February and March, opportunities
to suppress the spread of infection by introducing travel restrictions and
quarantine requirements were missed, allowing the infection to be brought into
the UK on at least 1,300 occasions.
Entering
the lockdown late cost lives, and leaving it early risks more needless deaths.
Britain is opening up before dropping its alert level, because the will to hold
out evaporated when Mr Johnson did not sack his chief adviser, Dominic
Cummings, for breaching lockdown rules. Sacrifice could be borne as long as it
was felt to be fair.
What
Britain is dealing with is a government that has blundered, and continues to
blunder. Which cabinet minister is responsible for the official guidance that
instructed hospitals to discharge the elderly to care homes when testing and
personal protective equipment was non-existent? Who has signed off on the
policy to hand over contracts to private companies without competitive
tendering or even a cursory check on whether they are up to the job? Which
minister decided that local authorities who regularly manage outbreaks of
meningitis and sexually transmitted diseases were not needed for the delayed
test-and-trace system?
These are
the reflexes of unthinking Conservative politicians, who view trade unions,
local government leaders and professional bodies as powerful interest groups
and influential lobbies to be thwarted, not listened to. In reality, most were
attempting to help the government out of a hole by asking it to stop digging.
What Covid-19 has revealed is who really makes society work and the value of
public servants prepared to put their lives on the line. What the government
does with that knowledge will tell the public about the true nature of those
that govern it. It is an insult that foreign NHS staff and carers are still
being charged for using the health service, despite the prime minister’s pledge
to scrap these fees.
The buck
stops at Downing Street, which was responsible for the discredited policy of
herd immunity and the late introduction of the lockdown. The quickest way back
to normality is by controlling the spread of the virus. The prime minister must
recognise that mistakes were made and learn from them. The questions of what
happened, why did it happen and what can be done to prevent this from happening
again need to be answered. It is bizarre that Mr Johnson has precipitately
announced a race review, one condescendingly aimed at ending a sense of
victimisation, before confirming a public inquiry into the government’s
handling of the pandemic. There will be real trouble if the prime minister
refuses a reckoning with the truth.
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