AN international consensus is emerging: Britain has messed up, badly. The UK’s official coronavirus death toll, at over 40,000, is now the highest in Europe. It is more than double the 20,000 ministers hoped to limit it to and is rising by hundreds each day.

How rash Boris Johnson now looks, having boasted early in the crisis of shaking hands with people in a hospital housing Covid patients, when he should have been impressing on people the virulence of a highly contagious new disease.

England’s chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty openly discussed a “herd immunity” approach early on, starkly at odds with World Health Organisation advice. The subsequent delay in isolating even the most vulnerable people was watched with furrowed brows abroad, as France, Spain and Germany started introducing lockdowns and social distancing. The UK Government has played a high stakes game of catch-up ever since and the question many overseas commentators are asking is: how, after watching what Italy went through, did Great Britain not act sooner?

The Sydney Morning Herald last week asked: “Where did Britain go wrong?” One analyst from Greece, which has recorded a death toll of just 156 after decisive action was taken early on, describes Mr Johnson’s response as “flippant and carefree”.

Even the Italian daily La Repubblica, while acknowledging Italy’s own massive failures, has commented that the “confusion and contradictions” of the UK Government in the past few months “have few equals”.

This is more than schadenfreude towards self-important “buccaneering” Britain; it is genuine incredulity, the international echo of the self-same questions being asked in the UK. How did Britain, one of the world’s most advanced democracies, with its sophisticated healthcare system, a nation embarrassed by an over-endowment of world-leading universities, end up lagging behind our neighbours in the biggest public health crisis of the last century?

How come we haven’t prevented more deaths?

Britain’s (not necessarily justified) reputation for competence and common sense had already taken a drubbing over Brexit. This event is likely to do the same, though perhaps that doesn’t matter much for its own sake.

But it does matter for another reason: because of what it says about the judgment of, in particular but not exclusively, the Johnson government.

This week, the UK Government has had a pasting, at home and abroad, for its “Stay Alert” message. Rightly so: the words are hopelessly unclear, leaving potentially dangerous room for misinterpretation. We are starting to see from countries like China and South Korea how quickly the infection rate can rise even when there is modest easing of the lockdown. Scotland has stuck to “Stay At Home”, partly because the infection rate is still higher than in England, which is further along the pandemic curve, but also because Nicola Sturgeon recognises a rubbish slogan when she sees one.

But the missteps are not confined to the government in London.

Edinburgh banned mass gatherings from March 16, which, to the Scottish Government’s credit, was days before London. But this was still well after a conference in Edinburgh in late February in which a visiting delegate with Covid inadvertently demonstrated how risky even relatively small gatherings were by infecting 25 people, something that the Scottish Government learned of on March 2. Full lockdown did not begin until March 23 and the question of why hangs over Ms Sturgeon just as it does Mr Johnson.

Then there was the zigzagging over testing. Mass testing was being dismissed in early April by the then chief medical officer Catherine Calderwood as a “distraction” which she said would not help slow transmission. It’s now recognised as a critical part of the “test, trace, isolate” strategy to contain the virus, though Scotland’s testing capacity is worryingly underused.

Community health staff feel they weren’t prioritised early on for PPE, with doctors, GPs and care home staff left to plead with Scottish ministers.

And then there is the care home question. It has been reported that Scotland has double the rate of care home deaths of England, though that comes with a serious note of caution: academics who have been crunching the numbers suggest that care home deaths in England are drastically underreported. Even so, the rate in Scotland is very high. How was the infection allowed to take hold, stealing like the Grim Reaper from room to room? Ms Sturgeon and her health secretary Jeane Freeman have highlighted the responsibility of private care home providers distributing adequate PPE. Care home companies will not escape the reckoning, but the buck will stop with the politicians. After all, it’s their job to hold care homes to acceptable standards.

Opposition politicians can see which way this is going. Jackson Carlaw has started using words like “outrage” and “failure”, albeit it in hushed tones (he knows his boss in London is facing the same accusations.)

Keir Starmer meanwhile has had the Prime Minister on the ropes, casting a forensic light on issues such as 10,000 unexplained excess care home deaths in England.

The polls, showing high approval ratings for Nicola Sturgeon and, among English voters, Boris Johnson, suggest a degree of magnanimity for leaders facing this unprecedented challenge.

After all, they can only act on the scientific advice they are given and that, too, will come in for scrutiny in due course.

Nicola Sturgeon is helped by her reputation for honesty and openness, her dedication and her obvious agony as she tries to take the best decisions in a rapidly evolving situation. She is the leader many English voters wish they had.

But in the end the real comparison will not be with England, it will be with other countries, and with Scotland’s proportion of UK Covid deaths broadly in line with its population share, it may not come out well.

At this stage, without complete and meaningful data, Britain’s status as Europe’s worst-hit country comes loaded with caveats. Population sizes vary, as do accounting methods: Belgium, for instance, appears to have a huge death toll because it assiduously includes care home deaths where Covid is suspected, unlike the Netherlands, which only includes people who have tested positive. Deadly second outbreaks could also change everything.

But from where we stand now, it looks as though history will judge the UK, including Scotland, to have fared badly.

Our columns are a platform for writers to express their opinions. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Herald