[ad_1]
For a moment it seemed that peace might have broken out between the two party leaders at the prime minister’s questions.
That after months of fighting over the government’s handling of the coronavirus, there was going to be a brief period of détente, as both parties allowed themselves to enjoy the possibility of ending the nightmare.
It is true that Boris Johnson did not dare to congratulate Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but he and Keir Starmer agreed that the Pfizer / BioNTech vaccine trials represented real hope and that veterans’ charities did a great job and they needed all the help they could get.
That’s how long the truce lasted, because the Labor leader then went on the attack. How is it that Help for Heroes got only £ 6 million from the Treasury when the government had given £ 670,000 in public relations contracts to the vaccine task force and £ 130 million to other public relations companies over the past year? Boris bragged and feigned surprise that someone questioned the integrity of his government.
Obviously, it made sense to award contracts initially to friends of friends, as it avoided the hassle of having to put them out for public tender. Like the appointment of the wives of Conservative MPs Kate Bingham and Typhoid Dido to key positions, it had sped up the hiring process for Covid jobs. Why bother interviewing someone you’ve already talked to over dinner?
Furthermore, Johnson continued, the £ 670,000 had turned out to be money well spent because had it not been for public relations consultants like we had in the UK, the drug companies would never have gotten anyone to participate in their trials.
It didn’t seem like it had occurred to him that this was a job most interns could have done in less than a day. Just a 30-second no-frills quick government information film recorded on a mobile phone and broadcast on all channels in prime time (almost certainly at no cost) asking for volunteers to participate in vaccine trials would likely have accumulated at least 100,000 willing applicants. Hell, I got a request through one of my Covid apps and signed up on the spot.
But let’s consider for a minute the possibility that no one had thought of a public service information film. In which case, a few billboards with a few select taglines should have worked. “Would you like the opportunity to help save a member of your family from Covid-19?” It could have hit the spot. Or if that wasn’t blunt enough, then play a dirty game with, “How many of your friends and family are you willing to see get sick or die before Christmas next year?” That should get people to call.
Look, that wasn’t that difficult. And since I’m in a good mood I’ll let the government have it for my peers’ fees of just £ 150k. Just send it to the usual offshore account.
Starmer was unwilling to let Johnson get away with it and started talking about knowing the value of the pound in his pocket. Harold Wilson shadows there. Keir then went on to ask how many face masks the private contractor Ayanda had delivered for £ 150 million (the answer: none) and if one extra £ 374 million delivered to Randox, the company that recalled 750,000 of its unused test kits earlier this summer, was the money well spent?
At that point, Boris went for a long walk on boxing gloves that didn’t deliver a knockout blow; Most of us had the impression that the aim of the vaccine was that it would deliver a knockout blow and life could return close enough. to normalcy, and accuse Starmer of being against private business as a matter of principle.
Now it was the Labor leader’s turn to look puzzled. Nobody had anything against private business. I just wanted to know that what I was getting was really working and was good value for money.
By now, Starmer seemed bored with Johnson, a sentiment shared by many on camera: The man who was supposed to be the great communicator who could reach the audience turned out to have the repertoire of an emotionally stunted Bullingdon Club boy, and he used his last three questions to address to the chancellor, the man he considers the prime minister on hold.
“I know he’s not here,” Keir reminded everyone, “so I guess you guys are the best option.” That humiliation hurt Boris, a narcissistic wound too far, and he never really recovered. He had no answer to the Labor leader’s accusations that lives, jobs and money could have been saved if the government had followed his and Sage’s advice and acted more decisively.
There was just time for Labor’s Angela Eagle to ask Johnson if he had any words for Donald Trump and to give her a second chance to congratulate Biden. This time Boris didn’t shy away from the problem. He dismissively referred to Trump as “the previous president” – Loyalty and Boris are not close bedfellows and can spot any lame duck other than himself – and after a few token words on how to get along with any president, he continued. saying how much he had enjoyed talking to Biden about Cop26. Interestingly, Brexit seems not to have been mentioned in the conversation.
And that was that. They hadn’t been a classic PMQ, but they rarely are these days. Boris knows he will come out of the half-hour session looking a bit more run down than before and his only goal is to muddy the waters and keep the damage to a minimum. And he had almost made it.
His expectations of himself are now as low as those of his own deputies, who have come to fear his public performances. It’s one thing for Johnson to embarrass himself; they had learned to live with it. It was quite another to embarrass the entire government.
