It seems even sections of the pro-millionaire media are echoing how cringeworthy yesterday's press conference was.
Journo after journo asked question after question requiring a specific, often statistical answer. Only for the government representatives to duck and dodge and wriggle and squirm.
No answer on how many NHS staff have actually been tested. Probably because numbers this morning reveal it's a pitifully low fraction. No answer why Gove blamed a lack of reagents despite suppliers immediately contradicting his claims. What? The bloke that joined Johnson as head of the discredited 'Vote Leave' campaign lying again? Surely not. No answer why an official exercise revealing how desperately short of ventilators the NHS would be in a pandemic was ignored. Infact the public sector currently proving so vital was further undermined. No answer on the continuing scandal of frontline staff being sent 'over the top' without proper PPE. Gear another government figure celebrated being delivered only last weekend.
And of course no answers whatsoever when any of this might change.
Then Johnson releases a video where he rumbustiously declares the need to 'ramp up' testing. With enthusiastic fist-pumps to emphasise it. Well yeah, that's what countless medical experts and staff have been telling him all along. So why has it taken until now for him to get it? Why are we still - STILL - seeing barely half the twenty five thousand per day he promised more than a week ago? Why will even that way off figure be disgracefully short of what many other countries are achieving?
Just like the election campaign he treats every day as 'day zero'. As if anything and everything that happened before was nothing to do with him. As if Churchillian calls for action can compensate for basic, bog standard competence.
But as we were reminded today it's the same Boris Johnson who didn't chair a COBRA meeting until the beginning of March and adopted a 'keep calm and wash your hands' approach whilst the rest of the world was being locked down.
As one international observer recently told us Britain had warnings. We had weeks if not months to see what was happening in the far east - communist party skewed figures though they may've been - and organise. We had years to put just one more ventilator in every hospital. One more bed in every ICU unit. One more doctor and nurse on every ward.
Yet every member of the current cabinet voted against such measures.
I make no apology for 'politicising' that fact now and will make absolutely no apology for repeating it when all this is over...
This post has been edited by The Earl of Chesterfield: 02 April 2020 - 10:04 AM