When this lousy war is over, there will be a reckoning.
And this being Britain, it will be a public inquiry chaired by a senior judge, like the Falklands and Iraq conflicts.
On past form, it will take several acrimonious months to set up, then years to take evidence and report with recommendations.
“Lessons will be learned!” the politicians will prate. “No stone will be left unturned!”
What, not even the one under which Boris Johnson hid for five weeks at the outset of the crisis?
The inquest could still be live when the country next goes to the polls, turning the election into a referendum on the Government’s handling of the pandemic.
All this is for the future, but already some themes are emerging.
It’s clear that we were woefully ill-prepared for this catastrophe.
Over a decade of Tory rule, thousands of hospital beds were closed. Nurse numbers fell as bursaries were scrapped. Stocks of personal protective equipment were depleted.
The social care system – if you can call it that – fell into rack and ruin. And what happened to the pandemic preparedness strategy dating all the way back to 2005?
An inquiry will not solve the most pressing problem: this is a Government of second-raters, incapable of coping with a crisis of such magnitude. Dominic Raab, Robert Jenrick, Oliver Dowden and Gavin Williamson and the rest are nonentities who can’t even handle media pressure.
Example: pipsqueak Communities Minister Simon Clarke, challenged on live radio why he won’t use 5,000 council officials to trace coronavirus victims, replied: “I am not sighted on that.”
Not sighted? What a wally.
Like the others, he is in office solely because he’s an ideological clone of the Prime Minister. If I can put it bluntly, they’re all his bastard political children.
It would be Bojo panto if it weren’t so tragic.
