Johnson’s regime is now trying to pretend that they know what they are doing. The most recent attempt at window dressing is of Johnson pretending to be a scientist and pipetting a pink solution into a tube in a filmed interview in Fujifilm Diosynth Biotechnologies plant. This follows the announcement of a blueprint for another radical NHS reforms . Whether this is genuine repentance at the deliberate running down of the NHS by 10 years of Tory rule, aided by the Lib Dems, or whether it is another cynical attempt to ride on the massive appreciation of the NHS amongst the population, and use it to pretend that the Tories are the saviors of the NHS, is not really the point here because it obviously is. Already because of the success of the vaccination programme, the Tories appear to once again be ahead in the polls, despite the dismal performance. Of course that is also facilitated by the fact that Starmer with no clear policies other than to destroy all of the achievements of Corbyn, has shown no policies, no leadership and no sense of direction-no effective opposition.
The actual devil in the details of the announced NHS reforms will remain to be analyzed as it no doubt will be used to exert more political control on the NHS. Rachel Clarke, who has been an excellent and articulate critic of the government’s health policies, discusses some of these points in theis article in the Guardian, together with others.