Boris Johnson screwed up within moments of stepping back into Number 10

Boris Johnson speaking outside Downing Street
Tracy Keeling


There’s been a sense in the press and among the right wing in England that Boris Johnson’s return to Downing Street would be a good thing. One Conservative MP even greeted the PM’s return from his coronavirus (Covid-19) absence by likening him to the Lion King.

 

But Johnson scuppered any hope he’s the saviour that England – and the wider UK – needs within moments of returning. Because the PM’s response to 20,000+ hospital deaths, thousands more non-hospital deaths, fatalities of 90+ healthcare workers, inadequate personal protective equipment (PPE) for those workers, and numerous other failings was to hail the aforementioned as an “apparent success”.

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God help us all.

Worse than the blitz

As The Canary‘s Kerry-Anne Mendoza recently reported, analysis from the Financial Times suggests that:

45,000 people have likely died from Covid-19. To put that in perspective, 43,000 died in the Blitz. Coronavirus has killed more British people than the Blitz.

A number of those deaths have occurred while Johnson was either in hospital, including on an intensive care ward, due to coronavirus or recuperating at the PM’s country retreat of Chequers. But anyone hoping his own experience, and the ghastly death toll he has returned to, would elicit some humility or mindfulness from the PM has been egregiously let down. Instead, upon his return to Number 10, Johnson stood outside and bellowed the following:

If this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected and invisible mugger, which I can tell you from personal experience it is, then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor.

And so it follows that this is the moment of opportunity. This is the moment when we can press home our advantage.

It is also the moment of maximum risk because I know there will be many people looking now at our apparent success and beginning to wonder whether now is the time to go easy on those social distancing measures.

You what?

No one can quite believe it:

In fact, some found the comment so outlandish and perverse that they thought Johnson must have been referring to something else:

Or that he was talking to someone in particular:

But as offensive, as ludicrous, as off the charts tone-deaf as Johnson’s comment is, it is typical of the Conservative government. Tory politicians often make completely bogus statements and repeat them endlessly, apparently expecting people to ultimately believe whatever codswallop is coming out of their mouths. “Get Brexit done” was a prime example. As foreign secretary back in 2018, Johnson also attempted to characterise bombing in Syria as ‘humanitarian’.

As George Orwell observed in his essay Politics and the English Language:

If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought

Johnson’s narrative as he returns to lead government risks corrupting people’s minds by making them think its handling of the pandemic is a roaring ‘success’. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Featured image via Guardian News/YouTube

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  • Show Comments

    1. Of course, had Corbyn been in charge nobody would have died and the NHS would have mountains of PPE… Oh no, another attack piece with no solutions or answers.
      Johnson ‘characterising bombing in Syria as Humanitarian.’ Another corker from Keeling. I believe grandpa Semtex associated with people regularly who used bombing. Or was he present but not actually involved? I think the codswallop comes from Labourites such as Abbott who quotes reports she hasn’t read, Sultana who has no idea how parliamentary procedure works and old Lynching advocate Mcdonnell.

      Trivia question, which G7 leader has the highest public approval rating by a country mile? Correct, Boris. This article seems to suggest, as The Canary so often does, that the British Public are stupid, fall for politicians tricks and that Tories were all in Slytherin House at school. In reality, they can see a bad politician a mile away (double failure Corbyn) and can see the Coronavirus situation for the shit sandwich it is.

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