Boris Johnson’s hero is Sir Winston Churchill.
He loves him so much he even wrote an excellent book about him.
Churchill, of course, made his legend by helping to win Britain the second World War.
Now the current British Prime Minister is facing his own war and being tested like no other leader of this country since the man he reveres.
But let’s be brutally frank: if he doesn’t get a grip very soon, then he may, as the Times newspaper so acidly put it in an excoriating leader article today, ‘find himself cast as Neville Chamberlain.’
Now the current British Prime Minister is facing his own war and being tested like no other leader of this country since the man he reveres
I have some sympathy for Johnson.
This is an extraordinary, unprecedented time to be the leader of any country, and decisions taken will impact many millions of lives.
But leaders are supposed to lead.
That is their chosen role, and especially in a moment of genuine crisis.
And nobody’s ever craved being Prime Minister more than Johnson.
So, my sympathy only goes so far.
And right now, it’s almost evaporated.
The harsh reality is that Boris Johnson is flailing – and flailing so badly it’s going to cost a lot of lives.
From the moment the coronavirus reared its ugly head, he’s shown an extraordinary reluctance to tackle it head on.
The World Health Organisation first signalled its concern that we could be facing a global pandemic in the middle of January.
Yet as China, where it started in the city of Wuhan, instantly threw the kitchen sink at trying to defeat it, Britain pretty much turned a blind eye.
Indeed, as the Times pointed out, the government seemed more determined to wage war with the BBC than with COVID-19.
In February, when China and other neighbouring countries in Asia began to get engulfed with infections and the speed and ferocity of this new highly dangerous flu became apparent, the British Prime Minister inexplicably disappeared for a week to his country residence Chequers.
Then, when COBRA, the country’s emergency council, finally met for the first time on March 3 to discuss the crisis, Johnson wasn’t even there.
He did appear in public later that day to address us about coronavirus and was asked if he was still shaking hands.
He smirked and replied: ‘I am shaking hands. I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were coronavirus patients and I was shaking hands with everybody, you will be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands.’
Then he said the ‘crucial thing’ was to regularly wash our hands for as long as it takes to sing Happy Birthday.
I remember watching that press conference absolutely aghast at what I was hearing. How could he be taking this so lightly when parts of the world were quite clearly in the grip of a major health epidemic?
Oh ‘that’s just Boris being Boris’, I was told.
And that’s been the problem ever since.
Because all the qualities that Boris Johnson has that enabled him to win a stunning election victory in December, are the things that make him so singularly ill-equipped to deal with something as serious as this.
I don’t want to see our Prime Minister chuckling with reporters, or using long words most of the public don’t know to show how intellectual he is, or not bothering to comb his hair.
More importantly, I don’t want to see him send endless mixed messages about what the public should do and fail to deliver the firm direct leadership we so desperately need.
Nor do I want him to constantly tell us how we’ll have ‘the sombrero’ licked in just 12 weeks when his own science experts say it will be at least year.
The truth is that Britain’s been sleep-walking into a total disaster with this deadly virus because the man at the top just hasn’t got his head round it.
As the rest of the world raced to close schools, pubs, restaurants, bars, gyms and any other places where people like to gather for fun, Boris Johnson resisted.
He was ‘following the science’, he kept repeating parrot-like.
And that’s a perfectly laudable position until it’s proven that the science we were following until very recently was so flawed it was taking the country into a catastrophe.
A bombshell report by Imperial College a week ago revealed Britain had been pursuing a policy of ‘herd immunity’ that the government believed would infect a lot of people fast and thus hopefully reduce both the death toll and strain on the NHS.
In fact, as Imperial’s experts established, it would have the complete opposite effect and lead to the NHS being overrun and the deaths of up to 500,000 people.
When confronted with this shocking reality, Boris Johnson did an immediate U-turn but pretended it was all part of his big masterplan to ‘evolve the strategy as we need to.’
No10 also denied there was ever an official herd immunity policy, yet the government’s own Chief Scientific Officer Sir Patrick Vallance had confirmed that was the policy, just days before.
Health Secretary Matt Hancock underlined this morning that a decision is expected ‘very soon’, hitting out at ‘selfish’ behaviour and saying ‘nothing is off the table’
And in a stunning report in yesterday’s Sunday Times, it was disclosed that this strategy had been driven by Johnson’s unelected adviser Dominic Cummings whose view at a private engagement in late February was allegedly summarised as “herd immunity, protect the economy and if that means some pensioners die, too bad.” It’s hard to imagine a more devastatingly damaging or outrageously callous policy call in modern times, one that mean that for at least two weeks we deliberately allowed millions of people to carry on as normal infecting each other – when every other country was locking things down.
No 10 have vehemently denied he ever said it.
But why the hell is Dominic Cummings leading government policy anyway?
I never voted for this grim-faced, casually dressed bully-boy.
Since that massive U-turn, Britain’s been playing catch-up, but Boris Johnson’s timidity has continued.
As death numbers rocketed in countries like Italy, Spain and France, their leaders enforced mandatory draconian action to try to stem the tide.
But our Prime Minister, even as Italian doctors begged us to learn the lessons from own belated response and properly lockdown, continued to just tell people to wash their hands and stay inside if they showed symptoms.
Even when Johnson did finally, last Friday, order pubs and restaurants shut, he still allowed them to remain open that night, so tens of thousands of people promptly flocked out for one last mass knees-up.
‘That’ll show the virus!’ they exclaimed with drunken bravado, oblivious to the reality that in fact, it meant they’d take the virus home to possibly kill their elderly relatives.
Why did Johnson let them do that if he was also telling us it would cost lives?
As a result of this terrible inaction, many more Britons will get the virus, and so many more will die.
This weekend, we saw the result of his refusal to order people to stay in.
The sun shone over Britain and many treated it like a bank holiday weekend – flocking to beaches, parks and tourist sites where they mingled with each other in direct contravention of Boris Johnson’s friendly advice.
The scenes made me sick.
These people are morons imperilling their own lives and those of others.
But ultimately, I blame the spineless sheep leading the country more than the brainless lemmings jumping off the coronavirus cliff.
If the guy at the top is saying ‘please stay home but go out if you need some fun’ then it’s hardly surprising if many think this can’t be too bad.
And if the guy at the top, as Johnson did, says he’ll go see his own mother on Mother’s Day, whilst telling everyone else not to, then many will be left baffled and bemused and make the wrong decision.
The people who will really suffer are the health workers so desperately struggling to save people’s lives all over the country.
A friend of mine’s mother, a lovely lady, is currently fighting for her life from coronavirus in a South London hospital, and my friend said the medical staff there are absolutely distraught at the double whammy of weak leadership and ignorant selfish fools making their lives so much harder.
They’re also distraught that they’re being so badly protected.
So many doctors and nurses have gone public to say they’re being exposed to terrible personal risk due to the chronic of suitable protective clothing, masks, gloves and sanitiser.
Nor do we have anything like enough ventilators to cope with the hell that’s coming in the next few weeks, so many will die because we don’t have the equipment to save them.
Perhaps the most diabolical failing though is on coronavirus testing.
We’ve had two months to properly prepare for this virus to potentially become a pandemic. Yet only in the past two weeks have we realised the severity of the crisis and raced to get the kit we need.
This weekend, we saw the result of his refusal to order people to stay in. The sun shone over Britain and many treated it like a bank holiday weekend – flocking to beaches, parks and tourist sites where they mingled with each other in direct contravention of Boris Johnson’s friendly advice. Pictured, West Bay, Dorset
The scenes made me sick. These people are morons imperilling their own lives and those of others. Pictured, Bournemouth yesterday
This is a shameful failure of the government’s emergency planning and means that many health workers are now being forced to self-isolate for 14 days without even knowing if they have the virus.
‘Test, test, test,’ has been the WHO’s mantra since January.
Yet ten days ago, the British government announced it was stopping general testing and would only now test the seriously ill in hospital.
Now we’ve done a U-turn on that insane decision too, but the damage has been done.
Britain needs massively more tests and testing as matter of extreme urgency.
If only to ensure our health workers can do their jobs.
We also need to lock down IMMEDIATELY in a proper enforced national quarantine because the sad but entirely predictable truth is that many stupendously selfish people in Britain don’t give a damn about Boris Johnson’s cheery ‘advice’.
But we’ve let the genie out of the bottle and free to do its worst for much longer than we should have done.
The only remaining question when the Prime Minister finally, inevitably, does he should have done weeks ago, is what price Britain will end up paying in human life for his abject, disgraceful dithering?
Churchill will be turning in his grave – as we bury our dead loved ones in new graves.