Failures of State

I'm about 2/3rds through reading Failures of State, an analysis by two Sunday Times investigative journalists into the multiple cock-ups perpetrated by our current government in its handling of the Covid crisis, and came across this damning paragraph, which I have to say is, sadly, one among many.

"On the day that Northwick Park was at critical level, Public Health England made a confusing announcement that sent out the wrong messages. The threat of Covid-19 was being downgraded so it would no longer be classed as a High Consequence Infectious Disease (HCID). This seemed inexplicable, as the virus was fast becoming the deadliest pandemic the world had seen for more than a hundred years. The downgrading, the government said, was a technical matter of terminology. The virus may have killed a lot of people, but it was a low percentage of the total numbers infected, according to the official line. Yet an investigation by the BBC programme Panorama discovered the move was at least partly a way to get around the shortage of protective equipment in the NHS. The problem was that the Health and Safety Executive had earlier ruled that the very top level of PPE should be worn when dealing with a disease ranked as an HCID. The change in classification therefore meant health workers could be kitted out with less protective equipment - making the most of the threadbare stocks available. The government had requested that the Advisory Committee on Dangerous Pathogens remove Covid-19 from the HCID list. Sources on that committee said it had taken the decision pragmatically based on the PPE stockpile shortages at the time. On the same day, NHS staff were told it was fine to wear less protective aprons and basic surgical masks."

Regardless of what you think of the Sunday Times' politics, it has an admirable record on investigative journalism, with numerous journalists receiving multiple awards.

Then there's the fiasco of the Nightingale Hospitals, which couldn't be used because there simply weren't enough staff to man them, which was in part also due to the woeful state of our PPE stocks, which meant doctors and nurses were dropping like flies.

Then there was the triage system the government introduced, meaning the elderly with pre-existing conditions, the very people they'd promised to protect, were denied intensive care treatment and left to die due to the shortage of ventilators, all so the government could say the NHS hadn't been overwhelmed. As they hadn't been tested for Covid, they didn't appear in the Covid death stats, even if showing the signs of Covid infection.

Doctors and nurses were warned by Health Trust managers about whistleblowing and threatened with all manner of retribution if they complained about lack of PPE, or indeed anything.

The litany of incompetence and skullduggery is breathtaking - and this was during the 1st wave of infection. It's no wonder Johnson isn't too keen on a public inquiry.

I heartily recommend the book unless, of course, you're one of the many for whom Boris and his bunch of incompetent slackers are nothing less than gods and incapable of doing wrong and the fact the government managed to get its vaccines before the EU (despite the EU signing its contract with AZ 24 hours before the UK - 27th vs 28th August 2020) somehow atones for the death of 127,000 of the citizens it was responsible for defending. Modelling has shown that had we locked down 2 weeks earlier, as advised by the science at the time, the death toll would have been halved and the most dominant strain across the USA and Europe would not be the UK variant.

Shame, in this country of ours, has gone the same way as honour - it has disappeared.

Some will say that we should withhold judgement till a public inquiry, but does anyone actually believe there will be an independent inquiry? There may be a whitewash, but Boris, with his majority, will resist a real inquiry. It would be too embarrassing, especially this close to an election.

Talking of public inquiries, the government has announced it will initiate an enquiry into the conduct of David Cameron and his lobbying activities on behalf of a company that the German anti-corruption service was trying to close down a while ago; a company with dubious links to Liberty Steel. The irony is that David Cameron himself promised in 2010 to implement policies to prevent him doing exactly what he has spent the last 12 months actually doing. Dennis Skinner was famously chucked out of the House of Commons for referring to Cameron as Dodgy Dave.

The double irony is that Boris Johnson has a habit of ignoring the recommendations and results of inquiries anyway. Indeed, his own independent advisor on the Ministerial Code resigned over this very issue of ignoring recommendations - and he has still not been replaced. Given such a replacement may have a lot more to say before this government itself is replaced, I doubt a replacement independent advisor will be appointed this side of an election. 

As for the Cameron inquiry, while the result won't implicate Boris, it could result in a call for tighter restrictions on him when he leaves politics, so I wouldn't imagine he'd be in no hurry to implement any recommendations arising from it. Nigel Boardman, the lawyer appointed to lead the inquiry, is compromised from the start; he is a non-executive director of BEIS which supervised the British Business Banks which is the very entity which lent money to Greensill.

While I'm at it, Boris Johnson said, when Foreign Secretary, that it was 'unconscionable and inconceivable' for any Conservative Prime Minister to do do exactly what he has a done as PM in respect of Northern Ireland and for which the EU is currently being blamed by the Tories.

What is it about the British public that allows this kind of malfeasance to proliferate and defend the indefensible?