Delusions and parallels with the past

Piers Morgan said Boris Johnson’s first speech at the Downing Street coronavirus press briefing after his recuperation at Chequers sounded ‘like complete and utter bullsh*t.’

“I didn’t think it would be possible for any world leader in this crisis to sound more delusional than Trump, whose antics at his own daily briefings have become an unedifying masterclass in how not to handle a pandemic,~” he said. “But Boris managed to make Trump seem almost credible, and his sycophantic loyalists on social media lapped it up.

“‘That’s our guy!’ they drooled as Boris informed us in no uncertain terms that we’re going to get this virus done, just as he got Brexit done.”

The stark fact, he pointed out, is that a chart entitled ‘Global Death Comparision’ showed that the UK is now trending to be the second worst country in the world for coronavirus deaths.

He said Financial Times journalists have looked at all available data from the Office of National Statistics and estimate the actual total in the UK to be more than 48,000 deaths - far above the ‘official’ one of around 27,000.

“The UK’s whole strategy to fight this virus has been a fiasco from start to finish,” he said. “We were scandalously slow and complacent in our response to its outbreak. The cold hard truth is that Boris Johnson didn’t care enough about this virus when it really mattered, and that has made Britain one of the world’s worst coronavirus death-traps.

“For him to now claim some kind of success is a woeful delusion.The stats don’t lie, especially when the stats are corpses.”

The Guardian

Andy Beckett said former Prime Minister Harold Macmillan - in office from 1957 to 1963 - was a charming Tory with a patchy record.

Often best remembered for saying Britons had ‘never had it so good’, what is often forgotten is that he said it in the middle of a pandemic.

“The pandemic, of a new strain of flu, had started in China the previous winter. During the first half of 1957 it steadily moved across Asia and then the rest of the world, killing hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “ In June, the first cases appeared in Britain.”

Cue the government denials that the virus was spreading in Britain until, in August, ‘ the virus was all over north-west England.’

“The government advised those with symptoms to stay at home, but otherwise took little national action as the flu spread right across the country during the autumn,” he said.

It was estimated to have killed around 30,000.

“Senior medical figures were horrified at Britain’s performance,” he said. “Many critics of Johnson over coronavirus are hoping for a similar reckoning.”

Our national myth often revolves around recovery from disaster, he said, the idea that failures by the state just create opportunities for future successes.

“Johnson understands this well,” he said. “His much-admired optimism is really a form of cynicism: as he blunders through the present, he keeps the possibility of better times for Britain in the future , like a mirage.”

The Daily Express

Frederick Forsyth agrees with what he sees as the growing mood that lockdown is now doing more harm than good.

People with cancer are not getting the treatment they need, he said, and our economy is ‘in the gutter.’

“ In place of “save the NHS, save lives” plastered all over our screens, the arrival in the right place of several trucks of masks, PPE outfits, test kits and ventilators would be nice,” he said.

“When this is all over, it has to be recorded that our national bureaucracy and its partner-in-incompetence the quangos have let us down badly in our hour of need. A root-and-branch clear-out here is vital before the next national emergency, which will surely come one day. In a long life I have never seen such a panic.

“But it should be recorded that It is not the great British people who have panicked or demonstrated collective incompetence. It is the over-indulged so-called leadership.”