ALTHOUGH it comes as no surprise to learn that the British government's own Covid lockdown rules were rarely followed inside 10 Downing Street, even its most ardent critics must be shocked at details about the attitude and behaviour which are now emerging in a public inquiry.
Then prime minister Boris Johnson is reported to have asked why they should destroy the economy to save “people who will die anyway soon”.
His then health minister, Matt Hancock, apparently wanted the right to decide who should live or die if the pandemic overwhelmed the NHS.
Read more:
- Hancock wanted to decide ‘who should live and who should die' – former NHS boss
- Boris Johnson blames NHS ‘bed blocking' for first Covid lockdown
- Covid inquiry: Johnson's No 10 was ‘unbelievably bullish' UK would sail through
While Conservative government policies were already having an impact on life expectancy before Covid, Johnson and his cabinet believed they had the right to literally make life and death decisions.
Medical science was to be ignored in the interests of their political careers. At the same time, Johnson used the government’s chief scientific adviser and the chief medical officer as cover for his wildly varying policy decisions, even though it now emerges that both men were mere observers during key decision-making.
Not only did he disregard professional clinical advice, he proved to be totally ignorant of even a basic understanding of what a virus is.
This was evidenced by the fact that he asked if he could kill the virus by blowing a hair-drier up his nose. While this raises the question of the quality of science teaching at Eton, Johnson’s old school, it also creates a rather disturbing image of successive Tory government policy-making over the past 13 years.
It is now clear that the challenge of dealing with the pandemic was made much worse by a failure to plan for such an event and the madcap management which Johnson brought to the cabinet table.
His officials have described him as weak, indecisive and unable to lead. His only consistent leadership appears to have been in allowing parties in Downing Street, which broke his own rules on lockdown.
That the Tories partied while people died is an indictment of their politics, their values and their morals. Sadly, none of that is confined to the past. They are still in office today, as we know here to our cost.
There is little evidence that their decision-making or integrity has improved since Covid. Some saw Johnson’s departure from government as progress, but real progress can only come when the callous culture he presided over has been left behind.
