Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears— The Sunday Times (@thesundaytimes) April 18, 2020
Failings in February may have cost thousands of liveshttps://t.co/90fMvq20O5
Big splash in the Sunday Times. Get Boris.
A scoop! A day by day; hour by hour diary of the government’s failures and gross mishandling of the pandemic. Boris’s selfish, narcissistic, stubborn deafness! His cavalier behaviour! Hundreds, nay, thousands of unnecessary deaths! Boris’s negligence! The government’s ineptitude!
The keyboard warriors had already been busy, piling in below the line by about 6:30 am! Get Boris!
The whole www blogosphere is full of people (like me) opining on stuff we know very little about. (But how could we? We know only what we’re told.)
“So whom” did no-one anywhere suggest “would have handled the crisis better?” Jeremy Corbyn? Decisive and presidential? He’d still have been ‘having a conversation’.
Andrew Marr, on behalf of the Labour Party, massaged Anneliese Dodds gently through her sermon.
Michael Gove had just been con-fronted by Sophy Ridge with the narrow-eyed stare that makes her look intense.
Marr’s fixers put him in the last slot where the imminent danger of ‘running out of time’ usually adds an extra frisson of suspense. No-one could have been surprised by the tedious predictability of the questioning - the likelihood of Marr getting a sudden surge of inspiration and imagination is next to nil.
“Did he or did he not miss five cobra meetings?” squeaked Marr, the air of triumph amplified by his extra-reedy tone of voice.
So pleased was he with this question that the moment Gove began his answer, Marr had already begun a series of ‘interruption’ noises. Nevertheless, Gove battled through the distraction with stoicism and forbearance.
“Did we not send billions of tons of our PPE to China?” continued Marr. But he had already stopped listening and concerned himself with the Marr Show’s rapidly approaching end time.
