100,000 deaths: after his – fake? – display of contrition, calls are mounting up for Boris Johnson to resign
I don’t have to say much here; an angry nation is saying it all for me.
First:
The PM says he did all he could to prevent 100,000 deaths. He’s either lying in which case he should resign. Or he’s telling the truth and his best wasn’t up to the job and he should resign. #BorisHasFailedTheNation
— Kate Wilton (@KateWilton1) January 26, 2021
That is the issue at hand today: should Boris Johnson resign over his Covid-19 failures?
The nation has examined the evidence and found that he should.
Piers Morgan on Good Morning Britain showered Robert Jenrick with just a fraction of the evidence of Johnson’s failures and it was overwhelming. Jenrick’s reply was to attempt to turn the conversation to the brighter side (as these government spokespeople do) but his words rang hollow:
“A series of cataclysmic gov’t failures. Does the PM regret anything he’s done?”@piersmorgan expresses the exhausted, exasperated, gut wrenching anger of the nation pic.twitter.com/EUtA9sdNBt
— Peter Stefanovic (@PeterStefanovi2) January 27, 2021
Perhaps surprisingly, Sky News went further – with a claim that Johnson’s act of contrition on television yesterday (January 26) was “gaslighting the nation”:
The PM was ‘sick with Covid’ because he went around shaking peoples hands like the buffoon he is. Also, NHS staff have worked so much harder than him. Jenrick is sticking his head in the sand of lies just like the rest of them. These people are fucking spineless. https://t.co/Ojm30aksHm
— Kath 💙🙀🇪🇺✊🏾 (@KathyBurke) January 27, 2021
These are not isolated examples. Peter Stefanovic (above) was right to say that Morgan was expressing “the exhausted, exasperated, gut wrenching anger of the nation”.
Johnson said he did everything he could. But consider the response of Dr Zubaida Haque, here: he only did what he was willing to do. And he clearly wasn’t willing to do enough.
100,000 covid deaths in the UK, and one of the highest excess deaths in the world tells us the PM didn’t do everything he could; he only did what he was willing to do. These tragic deaths were not the result of “following the science”; they were the result of following ideology. https://t.co/lsoXE8mDav
— Dr Zubaida Haque (@Zubhaque) January 26, 2021
Angela Rayner, for the Labour Party – not somebody I now feel comfortable quoting because of the diabolical persecution of her own party members that she supports – also nails it:
50,000 deaths from March-November. 50,000 deaths from November-today, including 25,000 in January alone.
The PM made the same deadly mistakes again and again. Too late to lockdown. Ignoring scientific advice. That isn't "doing everything we could". It is absolutely unforgivable.
— Angela Rayner 🌹 (@AngelaRayner) January 27, 2021
The trouble is, her party wants schools reopened just as soon as possible, even though this will only provide an opportunity to infect and kill even more people.
Perhaps a more acceptable Labour response is Bell Ribeiro-Addy’s:
“We did everything we could.”
Says the PM who flirted with herd immunity, locked down too late, failed on PPE, outsourced vital health contracts, ignored transmission in schools & refused to give people the support they need.
If that’s the best he can do, he should resign.
— Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP (@BellRibeiroAddy) January 27, 2021
Worst of all is the fact that people simply do not believe that the UK’s prime minister genuinely feels any sorrow, regret or contrition for the results of his actions (or inactions):
I have no idea how the PM feels about the grim Covid death toll here. I do know he sneered at Liverpool for holding a memorial for Ken Bigley who was beheaded by terrorists a decade before ISIS got going, and saw the city’s sorrow over Hillsbro’ as a psychological flaw.
— Shelagh Fogarty (@ShelaghFogarty) January 26, 2021
Instead – and this is the knockout blow as far as I’m concerned – we think he is a fake:
https://twitter.com/SpillerOfTea/status/1354206431076081671
That should be the end of him.
We should also bear in mind at all times that if Johnson is taking responsibility for everything that the government has done – as he claimed – then he is also taking responsibility for the deaths its decisions have caused: 2,000 in the construction industry, around 30,000 in care homes, and many more in other sectors around the UK. This Site commented on those deaths here.
Saddest of all is the fact that, even if Johnson quits, the agony won’t be over.
The UK electorate gave his Conservatives an overwhelming (there’s that word again) 80-seat Parliamentary majority in November 2019. This means that, even if he does quit, we’ll only have another useless Tory foisted on us. Jeremy Hunt is already positioning himself to claim the leadership.
Other possible candidates are even worse. Johnson surrounded himself with a Cabinet of halfwits and this means that there is a very limited choice of replacements.
Would you want Priti Patel running the country? Dominic Raab? Robert Jenrick? Nadhim Zahawi? Michael Gove? Jacob Rees-Mogg?
Just typing the names hammers home how ridiculous it would be.
But those are the choices if Johnson is forced out.
And what about us – the population at large?
This Writer has had to put up with eight Conservative Parliaments in my lifetime, before the current ministry under Johnson.
Mostly, since I was old enough to have a credible opinion on the subject, I have known that every Tory election victory has meant having to knuckle down, expect a hard time, but live through it in the hope that the next election result will be different and the Tories removed.
This time is different.
This time, we have to ask ourselves whether we can even survive this government.
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Dear Vox Political,
Why is Sky News and the like going after Tory Boris so much? And talking up Starmer.
Is Starmer’s mark 2 Tory party being put forward to take office?
No-one should ever vote Labour again.
Labour knew Covid19 was coming, as it was in Europe in November 2019 (Holland), yet threw the 2019 election against Labour.
Every single Covid19 death and excess death is equally at fault of Labour and Tory alike.
I think there’s a lot of truth in what you’re saying – that the people in charge of Labour now threw the 2019 election because they didn’t want Jeremy Corbyn to bring in his progressive politics and drag the UK back into the 20th century from its current position in the 19th, with a view to actually enter the 21st before everybody else embarks on the 22nd. They did not care that a pandemic infection would kill more than 100,000 people because of Tory mismanagement. They only cared about their own personal well-being. That’s not an accepted Labour attitude.