As the monotonous repetition of Tory Government propaganda exploits the Covid 19 crisis, by adapting the science to fit the reality of grotesque negligence and failed policy, we avidly await the well deserved scrutiny that will expose the lies we are being told. All of the BBC programming has radically shifted to prioritizing support for the Government’s messaging as our state broadcaster has come under stricter Tory Government dominated control; this is one of the core red flags warning us of the impending dictatorship. There is little or no opportunity for opposition or devolved Governments to provide input before decisions are taken and dictated as scripted by Boris Johnson and his disreputable team. Expect revised dictates on Sunday to be presented to Parliament on Monday as fixed policies that cannot be altered or amended; that is the reality of dictatorship that we must vocally appose.
I meant to post this a few days ago, but it is no less tardy than Hancock’s procurement of PPE or access to testing for Healthcare staff! PMQs on Wednesday began with Speaker Lindsey Hoyle wishing Boris Johnson well, congratulating him on the birth of his latest baby and welcoming him back to his “rightful place” in the chamber. I almost gagged, the “rightful place” for “part-time Prime Minister” Boris would be behind bars serving a very lengthy prison term for culpable negligent homicide! Thankfully aside from this nauseating reminder of the usurper’s stolen position of leadership following the Covert 2019 Rigged Election, fawning over the PM was kept to a minimum during this last session of PMQs. Starmer’s first question is a grotesque reminder of how completely out of touch with reality Johnson still remains, repeating Boris’s own delusional claim about our “apparent success” dealing with Covid 19 in the UK. Boris is oblivious to the fact that we have the highest death toll in Europe… Starmer asks, “ how did it come to this?”
Insisting that it is not just in this contrary but around the world, Johnson feigns regret over the tragedy of the appalling statistics; thankfully on this occasion we were spared the superficial Tory lament of “my heart goes out to…” We are drowning in a sea of hollow Tory sentiments as the PM desperately dives for cover behind a Guardian opinion piece by Spiegelhauer that excuses a Tory desire to ignore the horrific unfolding data while they complete their “Slaughter of the Sheeple,” with a targeted cull of the elderly providing a “Final Solution” for eliminating the financial burden of providing for Social Care! There must be no comparisons allowed as the Tories pursue their ruthless agenda while repeatedly claiming to be “governed by the science.” Johnson states that, “the one overriding principal and aim is to save lives, protect the NHS,” while in reality his reckless decisions have deliberately put thousands of lives at risk and the steady advance of privatization will consume our treasured NHS.
While Johnson says that there will be a time in the future to analyse the data and reflect, we all know he has no intention of ever allowing an independent inquiry to scrutinize his catastrophic failures and hold him or his team to account for the huge death toll. There’s another subtle change in the language appearing now, more double-speak to support a continuation of the “herd immunity” eugenics program. Johnson pretends to speak for “the people” claiming that they want us to “suppress the disease.” In reality what we really want is to totally eradicate Covid 19, not simply suppress it. In the drive to get the plebs back to work there is talk of an “acceptable level of infection.” This too is code for maintaining infection rates sufficient to achieve the “Holocaust in Care.” Those who can work survive to subsist on pittance wages the “economically inactive” pensioners and the disabled will be sacrificed.
In a rebuttal Starmer tells the PM that the Government has been using slides like this for weeks to do international comparisonsso his objection, “just really doesn’t hold water.” Like a fatalistic drip, drip, drip Starmer drives home the watchword “slow” saying that, “many are concluding that the UK was slow into lockdown, slow on testing. slow on tracing and slow on the supply of protective equipment.” He admits that, “deaths in Hospitals are falling, but deaths in Care Homes are continuing to go up… At the Preess Conference last night the Deputy Scientific Adviser said what this shows us is that there’s a real issue we need to get to grips with in relation to what’s happening in Care Homes.” He went on to say that, “twelve weeks after the Health Secretary declared that we were in a Health crisis…. why hasn’t the Prime Minister got to grips with this already?”
The PM said he was quite right and that he bitterly regrets the problems. He then said that, “a huge effort has been gone into by literally tens of thousands of people to get the right PPE to Care Homes, to encourage workers in Care Homes to understand what is needed.” This statement was deliberately, gratuitously insulting to dedicated Care Home staff as it implied that the cause of the supply problem was not that of the Government, but due to Care Home staff being too ignorant to know how to protect themselves. Skating past this obnoxious insult Johnson said that, “he is not right about what he just said about the state of the epidemic in Care Homes.” “Boris Shitting” his way forward Johnson said that, “if he looks at the figures in the last few days there has been a palpable improvement!” I was reminiscent of the famous Monty Python’s “dead parrot skit”…the patient has a pulse…. Ignoring the blatantly obvious reality Boris blathered on, “We must hope that this continues and we will insure that it does…” More death guaranteed!
Starmer calmly countered by saying that, “using the slide put up last night that shows, I accept there’s a lag, but sad they’ve been rising in every report from the ONS and I have heard before that numbers were falling, you said that a week ago, that is not borne out by these slides.” By way of warning Starmer says, “we will wait to see what the next slides bring.” Moving on to his next question he said that, “on the 30th of April the Government claimed success in meeting its 100,000 tests a day target, since then, as the Prime Minister knows, the numbers have fallen back. On Monday just 84,000 tests and that meant available tests were not used, what does the Prime Minister think was so special about the 30th of April that meant that testing that day was so high?”
Boris Johnson longingly recalls a previous compliment paid by Starmer over meeting the target, “he was right last week when he paid tribute to the amazing work of the NHS, the logistics team and everybody involved in getting up from 2000 tests a day in March to 120,000 by the end of April. He is right that capacity exceeds demand and we are working on that.” He then tries to reinforce a rather obvious lie by falsely claiming that, “were running about 100,000 a day.” NOT! He desperately tries to detract from ongoing failure by setting another goal, “…the ambition is to get up to 2000,000 a day by the end of this month and then to go even higher.” In a pretence that Starmer required persuading, he then said, “as he knows testing is going to be critical to our long term economic recovery.”
Starmer admits, “I did pay tribute last week and I am glad the target is now 2000,000 by the end of this month, but of course just having a target isn’t a strategy. What is needed is testing, tracing and isolation, that’s the strategy.” Johnson or at least his Health Secretary, Mat Hancock, may seriously regret setting another target that the Labour opposition will hold them to come the end of the month. Starmer continues, “contact tracing was the strategy, but it was abandoned in mid March, we were told that this was because it was “not an appropriate mechanism, but yesterday the Deputy Chief Medical Officer said that it was to do with testing capacity. Can the Prime Minister just clarify the position for us, why was contact tracing abandoned in mid March and not restarted sooner?”
Boris Johnson claimed that, “it was readily apparent to everyone that has studied the situation, scientists will confirm, the difference in mid March was the tracing capacity that we had that was useful in the containment phase of the epidemic, that capacity was no longer useful or relevant since the transmission from individuals from within the UK meant that it exceeded our capacity then.” The Tories let the virus take hold and then could no longer control the situation. But it was time for Boris to boast, “the testing, tracking and tracing operation we are setting up right now is for as we come out of the epidemic and we get the new cases done we will have a team that will genuinely be able to track and trace hundreds of thousands of people across the country and thereby drive down the epidemic.” He sounded confident, “so to put it in a nutshell it’s easier to do now that we have built up the team on the way out than it was as the epidemic took off… most people with common sense can see the particular difficulty we had at the time.”
Starmer tried to clarify for the record, “I think the Prime Minister has confirmed that it was a capacity problem. Can I wish the Government well on the tracking and tracing now and on the App that’s being trialled in the Isle of Weight? We all want that to succeed and we will all support that.” Starmer turn to protective equipment, “where clearly there are ongoing problems. Just this week the BMA survey said that 48% of Doctors had to buy their protective equipment for themselves or rely on donations: that’s completely unacceptable and its obvious that this problem is going to get even more acute when the Government asks people to return to work. We are clearly going to need a very robust national plan for protective equipment, can the Prime Minister reassure the public that they won’t be asked to return to work until that plan is in place.”
The Prime Minister tried to sound conciliatory saying, “I certainly can and I share his frustration about PPE and the frustration that people have felt across the house and across the country…” He then veered off course to, “pay tribute to hundreds of thousands of people involved in the logistics of supplying literally billions of items across the country in a timely way.” This was blatant self-congratulatory spin as few would agree the delivery was “timely.” He claimed that, “there have been no national stock outs of any PPE item;” not true where PPE runs out at the front line! But Boris hadn’t finished boasting, “we are now engaged in a massive plan to ramp up domestic supply and…” he name dropped Lord Dyson again, “we are able in the long term to satisfy the domestic needs of this country…. We will be laying out the details of that plan on Sunday.”
Starmer was ready for him, “I was going to come to the plan. There are millions of people on furlough as he knows, millions with children at home struggling with caring responsibilities if they are to return to work and if their children are to return to school, they need reassurance, we can all need that reassurance that it will be safe to do so. They do need to know what is the Government’s plans are for the next stage. Will he give that reassurance by setting out the plan, as he says he will, and will he come to this house on Monday to set out that plan and answer questions across the house?”
The Prime Minister said, “of course I will.” He then started into a devious excuse for dropping the plan on the public without allowing for any opposition scrutiny. He said, “the reason for setting this out on Sunday is very simple; we have to be sure that the data is going to support our ability to do this, but that data is coming in continuously over the next few days and we want, if we possible can, to get going with some of these measures on Monday. It would be a good thing if people had an idea of what’s coming the next day, that’s why I think Sunday, the weekend is the best time to do it, but of course the house will be fully informed and the house will have a chance to debate and interrogate me or the Government on that.” Sure, after we have had it rammed down your throat with no opportunity for input or chance to object; this is what a dictatorship looks like: the UK is a dictatorship!
Ian Blackford, speaking for the SNP, also welcomed Johnson back in Parliament to face the scrutiny of opposition by reminding him that “the UK death toll was close to 30,000, the highest in Europe and second highest in the entire world, but that some estimates put it even higher.” Whilst he agreed that the worst thing we could do was ease up the lockdown too soon and allow for a second peek of this deadly virus he wanted the PM to remind people that non essential travel is not permitted and cautioned that we should only be led by the best medical and scientific advice not the politics of posturing.
The PM took advantage of the question by praising how in the last few weeks the ability of the Governments of all four Nations had come together to deliver very clear messages for our people. As if saying “you will do as I dictate” it was a stark reminder of how severely weakened all opposition had become. Johnson will continue grabbing every advantage he can to solidify absolute control emphasized by his words, “I think the collaboration has been extremely helpful working with the Government in Scotland… the unions, business…” he reeled off factions that had been successfully brought to heel and were most certainly not being consulted or included in decision making, “to get un-lockdown plans right.” He continues, “this is absolute common sense as it would pose an economic disaster if we were to pursue a relaxation of these measures now in such a way as to trigger a second spike.”
Johnson has strongly hinted that the Tories will select policies to perpetuate a slow, agonizing continuation of the current suffering with the working poor forced to return to normal, whether the situation is safe or not, to keep the infection rate at a manageable level that does not overload the NHS and the death toll targeting the “economically inactive scroungers.” The focus will shift towards the economic recovery at the expense of waiting to get test, track and trace fully operational functioning effectively to eradicate the virus completely. Eradication is not a sincere Tory objective as a series of ongoing errors of judgement will continue to leave the most vulnerable including those in Care Homes exposed to the disease to cull their numbers in their “Final Solution” for Social Care a totally preventable “Holocaust in Care!” We cannot allow this rogue Tory Government to continue with this atrocity.
Ian Blackford pointed out that, “some of his people not following his own advice the Scottish Secretary of State has been making political arguments about the constitution rather that scientific ones about saving lives. He is not the only one this is not the time for opportunistic politicking this is the time when we must all work together to protect the NHS and save lives.” Blackford criticized the PM saying that, “he is making announcements on Sunday about easing the lockdown but this cannot be done without the cooperation of all of our devolved Governments. We must end this period of mixed messaging from the UK Government. Will the Prime Minister commit today that the substance of his address will be fully agreed to with the Devolved Nations so that all of our Governments continue with this vitally important work saving lives.”
Johnson said he shared this aim saying, “we will try to make sure that the outlines of this attract the widest possible consensus;” that would be after he had dictated the plan they would be forced to adhere to without question. Delighted by his prohibition on political arguments that he claimed “would be warmly welcomed across this country” it was obvious the PM saw this as elimination of scrutiny not a limitation on Tory grandstanding. There is a growing concern that the current expressions of willingness to be supportive during this time of crisis are being taken advantage of by a regime intent on cementing absolute power without scrutiny or accountability. The opposition parties cannot afford to go soft on Boris Johnson and his reckless team as he is proving himself to be an untrustworthy manipulator determined to cover up the ruthless Tory agenda that borders on deliberate genocide.
The SNP featured prominently during this PMQs asking tough questions that put Boris Johnson and the Tory Government on the spot. Marie Black brought up Universal Basic Income again saying that the increase in Universal Credit would not help those on ESA, so why didn’t sick people deserve an increase? The PM claims they have removed the seven day waiting time, but in his eagerness to quash any hope of UBI he revealed that the Tory strategy wasn’t to eliminate Covid 19 but to, “suppress the disease right down and allow economy to start up again.” David Lyndon stated that the Benefit Cap was a cut and would he now “scrap the cap?” This elicited a typical Tory boast of extravagant largesse pledged that will probably evaporate over time.
Lillian Greenwood said council workers were the unsung heroes of this crisis, pointing out who had born the burden of austerity and who cannot bear the burden of Covid. She demanded of the PM, “will he give councils a cast iron guarantee that they won’t be asked to do so.” While acknowledging the pressures local councils faced and bragging about a significant bail-out for Nottingham he deviously evaded any solid promise of protection for cash strapped councils across the board, even if he had done, few would believe him. In an earlier question Mike Amesbury had reminded Johnson of his Government promise to compensate councils and asked “how will he fulfil that promise and not return to austerity?”
Boris Johnson has now decided that the shameful Tory record of austerity, to which he wholeheartedly subscribed, is corrosive to his new messaging. In an effort to completely disavow the past, he is pledging no return of austerity; he has even tried to ban any mention of the ”A” word as he seeks an alternative spin on deprivation and exploitation for the future. This is a very raw wound that we cannot allow the Tories to cover with a cheap sticky plaster. It is our moral obligation to relentlessly remind Johnson of his own personal culpability in decimating our NHS, the hypocrisy of his constraint on a pay rise for those he now applauds as heroes, the funds stripped out of Social Care and public services: this shame is his Achilles heel, he knows it and we must never let him live it down. Forget the fully sanitized “A” word, the opposition must bang on about the sick reality of Austerity at every possible juncture.
The pain and suffering of the last decade will not end with a radical change of heart transforming the Tory Party. Inequality is hard-wired into their DNA and the dystopian nightmare that awaits us under this Tory Government will be more of the same with a minor rebranding of the measures they will insist are necessary to revive the economy for the benefit of the wealthy elite. The serious errors that have cost so many lives will continue unabated as we remain powerless to even moderate the reckless policies that are killing our citizens. As I have insisted so many times before our only option is a full investigation to expose the Covert 2019 Rigged Election and correct the huge injustice inflicted on the British people by removing Boris Johnson and his rogue Government from office ASAP. As the death toll continues to spiral out of control the urgent necessity of this action will gather momentum.