Johnson`s personal responsibility

If Johnson is indeed "able to ride this one out", and voters give him and his party "the benefit of the doubt over the handling of an unprecedented global pandemic", it will not simply be because of the furlough system and the arrival of the vaccines (Will Johnson shed the doubters if his dithering is largely forgotten amid a vaccine triumph? 13/01/21). He has been allowed to escape blame for the indecision, delays and frequent U-turns, not only by placing cabinet ministers in the firing line, but by an Opposition leader equally frightened of incurring temporary unpopularity. Rather than attacking Johnson, responsible for all the delayed decisions and misleading and confused messaging, Labour and the majority of the media have focused on the health secretary`s inability to equip NHS workers properly, Williamson`s lack of joined-up thinking generally, and Sunak`s refusal to make the £20 a week rise in universal credit permanent. Of course, incompetence should be punished with sackings, but there should be no doubt over who is ultimately responsible. Does anyone really think that the chancellor cannot be told what to do, or that the education secretary decides whether schools should be closed or not? Starmer`s refusal to support teaching unions over school closures was sufficiently embarrassing for it to be mentioned in this week`s PMQs by the prime minister who added that Marcus Rashford was doing more to "hold the government to account" than the Opposition. With Starmer failing to challenge Johnson on the wording of his pledge to "offer" all those in the first target group a vaccination by mid-February, I fear that, for once, he has a point!