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secondoris Johnson pampers us. Until last week, the Home Secretary had stayed away from Downing Street press conferences since a disastrous appearance last May. We now have Priti Patel twice in two weeks. But the prime minister didn’t have much of a choice, since he clearly didn’t feel like having a Thursday night drink himself. Matt Hancock isolates himself, Dominic Raab appears to have taken a vow of silence, and Gavin Williamson had almost delivered his letter of resignation during a series of interviews about car accidents during the morning media round.
So maybe Patel wasn’t a bad choice after all. Not because he had something very important to say, but precisely because he didn’t. Few politicians match its ability to fill dead air with a series of disjointed sentences that most people don’t know when it stops. Ideal for a press conference with minimum news content that should be extended to 40 minutes to keep up appearances.
The Home Secretary did more or less well when she was reading her previously prepared statement. Almost 5 million people had been vaccinated so far, she wanted to counter misinformation that the vaccine was unsafe, 1,290 people had been reported dead in 24 hours, the NHS was under pressure and she was imposing a new £ 800 fine by the minority of people who insisted on having parties at home.
Patel made it sound as if the few people who broke the rules were fully responsible for the pandemic rather than any mistake on the part of the government. She then went on to Martin Hewitt, Chairman of the National Police Chiefs Council, and Dr Vin Diwakar, England’s NHS Regional Medical Director for London, who pretty much repeated what she had already said with some examples included. So far, so good. .
Everything started to fall apart a bit when the questions started. The BBC’s Vicki Young wanted to know if England was likely to extend its blockade as Northern Ireland had just done, and if the Home Secretary was pleased that Boris had finally adopted her mindset on tighter border controls. for visitors from other countries.
Patel could sense the danger and turned on his default nonsense fill setting. We were in the middle of a terrible pandemic. The vaccine was a good thing. It was too early to say when the lockdown would end, even though the government had promised a mid-February review that everyone had known was absurdly optimistic and only presented as a possibility to keep the Coronavirus Research Group. headbangers loosely beside him.
He also seemed to have forgotten about Patel that earlier this week, perhaps anticipating a messy and damaging public inquiry, he had stabbed Johnson in the back by claiming that he had wanted stricter border controls in March, but was overruled by the prime minister. So he ignored that part of the question and repeated again. We were in the middle of a terrible pandemic. The vaccine was a good thing. It was too early to say when the lockdown would end, etc., etc.
The Home Secretary followed suit when asked if people should think about booking summer vacations. We were in the middle of a terrible pandemic. The vaccine was a good thing. It was too early to say when the lockdown would end and people should focus on staying home rather than thinking about traveling. And by the way, the emergency services were doing an excellent job.
To break things up, and perhaps because even she realized she had nothing more to say, Patel regularly invited more contributions from Hewitt and Diwakar, but they didn’t have much to add to what they had already said. Beyond Hewitt asking the government to put the police higher on the vaccination priority list and Diwakar saying the NHS was under such pressure that he couldn’t conceive of planning more than two weeks in advance at this time. So the idea of people booking summer vacations was a massive category mistake.
Patel had time to dismiss the quarantined hotels as “speculative.” If the Home Secretary does not know what the government’s policy is, who does? – and to label vaccine queue-jumpers as ‘morally reprehensible’, but ultimately took off when asked why the UK had the worst death rate and whether the government’s own actions had been a major factor in this. Unlike the weekend, when he had tried to argue that other countries counted the dead differently, Priti Vacant reverted to his usual diversionary tactics of semi-coherent rambling.
We were in the middle of a terrible pandemic. The vaccine was a good thing. It was too early to say when the closing would end. Each death was a tragedy. Perhaps the repetition was a comfort to her, but most listeners had fallen asleep when she finished with the claim that the government had been guided by science at all times. There are many scientists, including an increasingly vocal Patrick Vallance, who would disagree. But for Patel it was a job done: a press conference that had contributed little to public understanding. Forward and sideways.
