This right here.
Boris and his government have consistently been acting too late and pushing to re-open before it is safe. While not as extreme as some of the reactions we have seen around the world the Trump/Bolsorano/Modi instinct is alive and well within the UK government- ever since the virus was discovered, the conservative party has been a hotbed of “re-open the economy as soon as possible” sentiment, with only the sudden realisation of the death toll that this would cause pushing them onto a more rational path.
They are escaping any sort of political fall-out for their incompetence earlier in the pandemic, because of news overload, and because of how well the vaccine roll-out is going. (See my earlier post about that)
So let’s just look back at some of the rank incompetence that the UK government has been up to over the course of the pandemic:
Boris’s government initially wanted to let the virus run its course to achieve “herd immunity”
The UK refused to control international travel to the country, at a time when it could have made a difference:
Then, when controls were in place, there was and remains no enforcement of quarantine requirements for people returning from abroad, and no attempt even made to keep track of people arriving from high-covid areas.
When the health service was in desperate need of protective equipment, the government ran a corrupt and chaotic procurement process, handing out contracts to companies that had links to politicians:
Then they tried to cover it up:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-procuremen-idINKBN2AJ1KF
After the first lockdown was over, the UK government fuelled the second wave with a scheme to encourage people to use sit-in dining:
Then, when the second wave was clearly incoming, the UK government initially refused to countenance a second lockdown
Even refusing support to the devolved governments if they wanted to respond to the second wave before England did:
And this is just a sampler of the incompetence, corruption and dithering that we’ve seen from the UK government. It’s clear that the instincts of the Boris clique are towards full denialism, and that any successes are down to pure chance.
