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northTwo months after the close began, getting out of it would always be a difficult message to sell. It could have been easier if spokeswoman Lindsay Hoyle had been a bit happier with Downing Street’s plan to announce a reduction of restrictions on staying at home away from parliament on Sunday night.
Boris Johnson had said it was because the restrictions were to be changed by Monday. But in reality, the goal was to ensure the largest television audience possible, although keeping the speaker on board meant vital explanatory documents had to be withheld until the Commons sat down on Monday.
In the gap, a fatal confusion was sown. Traditional media management required following the prime minister’s anticipated easing of the Sunday papers, and Downing Street boldly decided to report to its most trusted weekend newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, with the revised slogan, “Stay alert”.
That morning, however, there was little to back it up. How is it possible to stay alert against a virus? Was it really time to drop the clearly understandable “stay home” message, even though there were still around 400 people who died every day of the week? With little else to do, people quickly shared their own versions online. “Be lazy, cover our backs, shirk responsibility” said one of the many memes that circulate.
Then the slogan, and the resulting bewilderment, became the story. Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted the Telegraph home page. saying it was “the first time I saw the Prime Minister’s new catchphrase”. Northern Welsh and Irish administrations, responsible for their own health policies, followed suit, and a day later, Labor Wales, briefly suggested that it would be guarding its own border with England. Suddenly, puzzlingly, the integrity of the United Kingdom came into question.
Johnson’s presidential speech came at 7 p.m. and an extraordinary audience of 27.7 million people tuned in to see a tired and unrepentant-looking prime minister read from his prepared script. “No, this is not the time simply to end the blockade,” Johnson said, as a series of color charts swirled, suggesting that elementary schools might reopen in early June and perhaps even bars and restaurants from beginning of July.
The prime minister may have survived his own brush with the disease, but the 13-minute broadcast was not a time for reflection. There were no apologies like those offered last month by French President Emmanuel Macron, who had admitted that his government “was not sufficiently prepared.” Nor is the informal honesty of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who gave a simple explanation of the importance of the R reproduction number.
British public skepticism quickly turned into satire. Just over an hour later, the comedian Matt Lucas spoke for a bewildered nation, imitating the voice of the prime minister. “So we are saying don’t go to work, go to work, don’t take public transportation, go to work, don’t go to work.” Johnson’s statement was no longer a political announcement; it had become a cultural event.
Conversations buzzed in the chat groups: who was being “actively encouraged” to go to work and what would be the situation on public transport? And, in a nation hungry for social interaction, would it be possible to meet a line of friends, all 2 meters away from each other, or both parents in a park?
Dominic Raab, the foreign secretary, tried to explain the next morning. People could meet both parents outside as long as they were 2 meters apart. Except that the government had to rush a clarification to say no, people can only meet one parent each time it’s not their home, a perplexing restriction that made less sense as the week progressed and rules to allow Real estate agents entering their homes relaxed.
It was incumbent on Phillip Schofield, the perennial presenter of This Morning, to express growing national frustration. “You literally could not write this. If this were a TV farce, I would say, ‘That’s a bit far-fetched, no government would consider it that much,'” he said in a studio speech that left his co-host, Holly Willoughby, unable to talk
A day later, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, went to ITV to give the presenter some answers. But he ended up accepting on the air that “summer is canceled” and that people should not hug until a vaccine is found. It was as if the government couldn’t catch up.
The repeated missteps were a gift to Labor, whose new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, had been struggling to cut, as the public had gathered around the government, the NHS, and Johnson himself as he recovered from his severe friction. with the deadly virus.
Starmer he was granted his own special broadcast on Monday. “After all this, all the sacrifice and loss, we cannot go back to business as usual,” he said. And just as Downing Street finally thought he had managed to explain what the “stay alert” phase meant, Starmer successfully ambushed Johnson at lunchtime Wednesday with questions from the prime minister.
Turning to the crisis in nursing homes, he challenged a clearly unprepared prime minister. With official advice valid until March 13, Starmer coldly accused the government of having “planted” the epidemic in nursing homes by transferring patients from hospitals in Covid-19.
Johnson tried in vain to deny that the council existed. Then Downing Street wrongly claimed that Starmer was wrongly citing. Daily Telegraph sketch writer Michael Deacon wrote that Johnson had been disarmed “like a Duplo train set,” and the sight of an organized and effective opposition attack left parliamentarians Tory scared.
If there had been a truce on the coronavirus, it was truly over and pollsters recorded a change in mood. This week, YouGov reported that 65% of Britons believed that the government’s messages had been “unclear” or “not at all clear”. They also saw Johnson’s net approval rating drop to plus 22, behind Starmer at plus 23.
It is too early to say whether the government has recovered from a week of disastrous communications, or whether the closure uprising, and its necessary nuances, will continue to be haunted by frustration and confusion, but Schofield can be seen as a new barometer. .
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