The Government’s bid to soften lockdown was a communications disaster. The latest slogan makes little sense compared with the ‘Stay at Home’ lucidity of its predecessor. We were told new rules came into play on Monday, then Wednesday. There was confusion as to whether they would apply in Scotland and Wales. Even Dominic Raab, the Prime Minister’s deputy, got in a pickle when sent out to explain the new strategy, erroneously telling radio listeners they could meet both parents in a park.
This muddle was summed up by the comedian Matt Lucas in a vicious parody of Boris Johnson that quickly went viral. “So, we are saying don’t go to work, go to work, don’t take public transport, go to work, don’t go to work. Stay indoors, if you can work from home go to work, don’t go to work. Go outside, don’t go outside. And then we will, or won’t, something or other.”
This shambles is a shame, regardless of your political persuasion, since the pandemic confronts our country with such a profound crisis. We need as much clarity as possible in the search for a path back towards something approaching normality. Yet it is odd that such an effective team of campaigners, who pulled off Brexit and a big election victory against the odds, managed to create such a public relations calamity.
It is hard not to wonder whether the virus itself is to blame. Certainly Johnson was hit badly, admitting doctors had to give him ‘litres and litres’ of oxygen and that he was close to being put on a ventilator. He looked exhausted after returning to Downing Street and is, unsuprisingly, working fewer hours. It is said he gets fatigued, sometimes struggling with memory.
Three other central members of the political team at core of this crisis have also been infected. Dominic Cummings, the key Downing Street adviser, collapsed and was in bed for 10 days. “…he lay doggo with a high fever and spasms that made the muscles lump and twitch in his legs,” wrote his wife, Mary Wakefield, deputy editor of The Spectator. “He could breathe, but only in a limited, shallow way.” The health secretary Matt Hancock was also struck, although it seems much less seriously. Now we have learned Sir Mark Sedwill, the cabinet secretary and civil service chief, also caught the disease.
They deserve sympathy on a human level.”If you’ve suffered from it like Boris and Dom have, there is a personal fear of this disease,” one aide told The Sunday Times, who added that both men still felt “rough” at times. Yet at the same time it is fair to ask an uncomfortable question: is there any lingering impact on the critical quartet working out how to tackle this new coronavirus — especially when the decisions of the Prime Minister, who has had such a bad experience of it, have such massive consequences for both his citizens and his country?
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Only remainers who hate everything that has happened politically in the last few years don’t seem to understand the saying
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Correct, the poor souls, are clinically demented.