New lockdown looms: will Boris Johnson accept responsibility for all the deaths since he ruled it out?
Johnson’s Covid-19 strategy: muddle the message.
The mainstream and social media are full of reports that Boris Johnson is finally going to give in to the inevitable and impose a new national lockdown – possibly as soon as next week.
The reasons are easy to understand: Covid-19 infections are now reaching a point where they are worse than at the height of the first wave, with 24,405 new infections reported on Friday (October 30), and 274 deaths.
Hospitals are feeling the pressure again, with the number of Covid-19 patients in hospitals in Nottinghamshire 40 per cent higher than at the peak of the first wave in April.
And a study found that the government’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme caused a significant increase in Covid-19 cases, with between eight and 17 per cent of newly-detected infection clusters linked to Rishi Sunak’s hare-brained scheme.
It gets worse:
When Labour proposed a 2-week circuit breaker lockdown on October 13th, the Tories said Starmer was a "shameless opportunist" who was "playing political games in the middle of a global pandemic."
Boris Johnson is now set to implement a 4-week lockdown because he waited too long.
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) October 30, 2020
Starmer is a shameless opportunist, as his reckless bid to kick Jeremy Corbyn out of the Labour Party proves. He’ll split the only realistic opposition party to the Tories, leaving Boris Johnson free to carry on with policies that kill people, well into the future.
And Johnson is killing people. Here’s the proof:
The day after Starmer called for a new lockdown – October 14 – the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) reported that
there were between 43,000 and 74,000 people being infected with coronavirus every day in England.
Their report said: “This is significantly above the profile of the reasonable worst-case scenario, where the number of daily infections in England remained between 12,000-13,000 throughout October.”
So at least four times more people are catching Covid than had been anticipated, meaning SAGE’s worst-case scenario figure of 85,000 deaths over the winter is likely to be a vast underestimation.
It seems that on Friday, at long last, somebody finally broke through to Johnson and managed to communicate to whatever rudimentary thought process occurs within his blonde-befuddled head that something needs to be done. If so, that person may well be a miracle-worker.
And now we have reports of a new lockdown:
BREAKING: National lockdown next week to last up to December.
According to Government briefings to national press
— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) October 30, 2020
According to The Times, a new nationwide lockdown is set to be announced by the government on Monday, with the measures likely to come into force two days later.
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) October 30, 2020
According to The Times, all non-essential shops will again be forcibly closed, but nurseries, schools, and universities could be allowed to stay open this time.
You can read their full front page scoop below: pic.twitter.com/CEvgT0YTiw
— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) October 30, 2020
So Johnson is finally doing what he should have done 17 days ago – and what the evidence told him to do 16 days ago.
Clearly he has learned nothing in the seven months since March, when he also delayed implementing lockdown until the situation reached a point where many thousands more people died than would have if he had only acted a little sooner.
Now, even if he does impose a new lockdown, many thousands more people have already died than needed to – and many thousands more will die.
That is what experience tells us.
Will Johnson accept that, as prime minister, he is responsible for these deaths? If not, how can we make him accept responsibility for them?
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“Starmer is a shameless opportunist, as his reckless bid to kick Jeremy Corbyn out of the Labour Party proves.”
Surely the real issue here is why did Jeremy make a conscious decision to martyr himself and precipitate a potential rift. What on earth did he hope to achieve from this confrontation. Unsurprisingly Corbyn’s stance certainly doesn’t appear to have attracted the universal and wholehearted support of his fellow Left Wing MPs.
“The response to the dramatic events has been mixed. 20 of the 33 SCG MPs (not counting Corbyn himself) have, at the time of writing, yet to comment on the suspension of the former Labour leader. Another five have simply retweeted the initial SCG post calling for his reinstatement, while others such as Ian Lavery, Kate Osborne, Zarah Sultana, Bell-Ribeiro-Addy and currently-suspended Claudia Webbe have taken to social media condemning the disciplinary action but giving no comment on what Corbyn said.”
https://labourlist.org/2020/10/how-labour-left-mps-have-reacted-to-the-suspension-of-jeremy-corbyn/
You are falsely attributing motivations to Jeremy Corbyn that you don’t know were there. You don’t know that he made “a conscious decision to martyr himself and precipitate a potential rift”. All he did was present the facts of the matter. You’ll be aware, of course, that people were polled – they were asked how many people in Labour had been accused of anti-Semitism and it turned out that people thought 34 per cent of the party membership had been accused. In fact, 0.3 per cent had. So Corbyn was right to say that the extent of the problem had been grossly exaggerated. His claim that this was done for political purposes is also supportable with evidence.
Your claim that the SCG MPs haven’t been wholeheartedly supportive is also disingenuous. You don’t know their reasons for doing what they have done and it is not for you to make wild claims about it.
So stop.
Labour List is very right wing so will of course draw conclusions that are exaggerated about Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer had been looking for any opportunity to suspend Jeremy Corbyn, it just happens that he (JC) has been punished for telling the truth. It certainly wouldn’t stand up in court should it get that far.
Just a post to support your response to SteveH’s attack dog, Mike. I wonder who he is. There’s a fanatically fact-twisting Steve – and I think it’s a Steve H**** – who posts comments in similar vein to articles in the Guardian & suchlike…
To be fair and I have heard this fro other scientists, the advice was devoid of any other considerations, of which politicians must take account. A regional approach was proposed, which garnered support across the House and even Professor Jonathan Van am appeared to support it. 2 days later, that Kier person started jumping up and down, accusing the government of “not following the science.” There is no “the science.” There is opinion and mine says, given what we know about this virus, that the 2 weeks that were mentioned, were not enough, because it would only be after that period has passed, that any reduction in R, or the number of infections would be evident.
We know that there is a broad range of scientific opinion and we must be careful not to conflate science with scientists.
I believe that the government should have introduced a programme of public education and had total lockdown for between 4 and 6 weeks. Had this happened, people would understand not just what to do but why and with no opportunity for social interaction outside of the home, we could have got on top of this by May but we didn’t and we are where we are.
There are those, both in Parliament and across society, at large, who think that the Prime Minister has not gone far enough and others who think that he has gone too far and those who, clearly, don’t care, You can’t please all of the people but as I have said, in another post, when all is said and done, it is up to us how we behave and our behaviour that will dicatate how this pans out, ragardless of what the Prime Minister says, or does.