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TThis Tuesday was the national day of reflection to commemorate the anniversary of the beginning of the first confinement. Ideally, of course, it would have happened a week or two earlier if the prime minister hadn’t been so willing to take the coronavirus seriously. Boris Johnson hadn’t bothered to attend five Cobra meetings; he had insisted on ignoring the scientific evidence, boasting of shaking hands; he had allowed the Cheltenham Festival to take place. And it would have been hell to pay if she had tried to cancel Carrie Symonds’ baby shower at Checkers.
Then there was the abject failure of testing and tracking in its first few months. The scandal of the residence. The overly optimistic relaxation of the rules during the summer. The refusal to adopt a circuit breaker in the fall. The complacent messages around Christmas. The delay in bringing a third national blockade. So arguably what the country was also stopping to remember were the thousands of people who had lost their lives to Johnson’s incompetence and negligence.
Not that any of this was mentioned at the Downing Street press conference later that day. Rather, Boris, flanked by the familiar faces of Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, tried to speak about the spirit and resilience of the British people for having survived such a prolonged period of deprivation and highlighted the success of the UK vaccination program. . When the worst of the pandemic has passed, it will be time to think about an appropriate and permanent tribute to all those who have lost their lives. He did not say what form that commemoration might take. Perhaps a statue of Johnson dressed in a clown costume. Or maybe something more substantial than a 1% pay increase for all NHS workers.
Many of the questions invited Boris, and England’s medical director and chief scientific advisor, to reflect on things they could have done differently. All of them sidestepped the issue, as none of them exactly covered themselves in glory in the early days of the pandemic. Johnson noted that this was a completely new virus and that they had had to come up with a policy on the fly. Which was true to some degree, although it didn’t explain why other countries had done much better when faced with the same new health threat. The UK’s death rate has been the highest in Europe and its economic recession the deepest.
“Do you wish you had closed sooner?” asked an ITV reporter. Boris shifted uncomfortably and tugged at his hair. They are very difficult decisions, he said. Those for which there are no good results. Although some of those who died might agree on that. Again, Johnson probably couldn’t do his job without a high level of denial about the mistakes he’s made. If you thought seriously about the consequences of some of your decisions, you would not be able to sleep at night.
And deep down he knows it. When asked how long he would be dealing with the effects of the coronavirus, he replied: ‘For the rest of my life.’ Although it was not clear if it was a ray of consciousness, which is not usually found in professional narcissists, or a man who begins to feel self-pity for the position he is in now. To give you the benefit of the doubt, let’s call it a little of both. Although a prime minister feeling sorry for himself in a day to remember 125,000 dead is not the best aspect.
While Boris staggered rather, both Whitty and Vallance stepped in to complete the pauses. Over the past year, the CMO and CSA have become noticeably more self-assured under the spotlight. They have forgiven themselves for the herd immunity misstep early in the pandemic and have grown in stature. They are the two adults with Boris’s clumsy teenager. Now they are no longer afraid of the truth and are willing to call it what it is. So there was no chance of Covid being eradicated – the best we could hope for was living alongside him with repeated booster hits. And the people who died were the same people who always died: those who lived in the most disadvantaged communities.
Johnson sidestepped a question about second home owners who could go abroad (his father figure, Stanley, hovered a lot on that one) and was happy to end the press talking about vaccines. The only thing that, without a doubt, has been right. But that’s the equation you just can’t solve. Does the vaccine exonerate you from all of your other disastrous decisions? Will he somehow get away with it and emerge as a heroic figure, a great leader, or will he be judged for his other disastrous decisions? At the end, will everyone be so tired of the coronavirus that they are willing to forgive and forget? Or will the dead be given a voice? A year later, Boris doesn’t realize it.
