Danger of being a "bystander"

Stephen Bush`s opinion that Keir Starmer "had a good week", because his call for the government "to publish its lockdown exit plan" was validated, shows to what depths our expectations of UK politicians have sunk (Johnson and Starmer both know a true exit plan means reducing our freedoms, 10.05.20). In that same week, thousands died, many of them unnecessarily, because of the government`s failure both to react sufficiently quickly to a worldwide virus alert, and to take advice from the World Health Organisation, and because the prime minister preferred to spend time at Chevening than attend Cobra meetings about how the country should respond to the impending crisis. Yet the leader of the Opposition chooses only to offer "constructive criticism"!

     Starmer has avoided so far being linked with any of the government`s Covid measures, but when there is a risk that ministerial ineptitude will take the death toll to six figures, he needs to be doing much more. There is absolutely no doubt how history will judge this government`s handling of the crisis, and the prime minister suitability for the role, and unless Starmer goes on the offensive and demands resignations for such blatant incompetence, his ineffective opposition will be seen as a contributing factor in the causes of the second spike.

  Electorally, too, being a bystander can be as disastrous as being a "collaborator"!

I have no sympathy whatsoever with Kyle Walker, but I do find it strange that his breaking of "coronavirus protocol" manages to attract more media attention than that of a cabinet minister who made media appearances to tell the public to stay at home (The Kyle Walker case: why not all lockdown offenders are made equal, 12/05/20). Robert Jenrick, the Communities Secretary, like Walker defied the rules twice, by leaving his £2.5 million townhouse in London, where his wife works and his children go to school, for his second home in Herefordshire, from where he visited his parents who live forty miles away! , 

 Chris Whitehouse , the managing director of a consultancy communications agency, who described Johnson`s "address" as sowing "doubt, confusion and uncertainty", also reminded us of a much underused F-word these days (PM`s address a "dog`s dinner" say strategists, 12/05/20). He said that whoever came up with the "stay alert" slogan "deserves to be fired". Perhaps more to the point, ministers who disobey their own rules deserve that fate, and the one who chooses to serve up the "dog`s dinner", first in a pre-recorded televised speech, then to parliament, and then a third time back on television, has to be asked to resign!