Nigel Adams, MP for Selby and Ainsty, has stood down but did not say why.
Mr Adams, a Cabinet Office minister without portfolio under Mr Johnson’s government, had previously announced he would not be standing at the next general election – but has now brought that decision forward.
In a tweet announcing he was going immediately he said Selby Conservatives had selected a new parliamentary candidate on Friday.
It means there will be another by-election. That’s three the Tories have to manage since the beginning of Friday, including Johnson, Nadine Dorries, and now Mr Adams, who is said to have been a Johnson ally.
The Conservatives can ill afford to waste time, money and effort on by-elections when they’re struggling with the economy, the cost of living, and public opinion.
And who knows how many more resignations there will have been by Monday morning?
Michael Rosen: he may have permanent hearing loss in his left ear because of Covid-19 but you go on saying it’s just the ‘flu if it helps you sleep at night. Or until it happens to you.
You know the story. You’ve probably heard it from somebody you know.
It’s the one that says Covid-19 doesn’t exist; that it’s just the ‘flu. “I mean no more people have died of it than die of ‘flu, right?”
We’ll skim over the fact that it isn’t over yet, and that it hasn’t taken as many lives as it would have without lockdown, social distancing and all the other restrictions that – albeit belatedly – have been imposed to improve our life expectancies.
These people tend never to have met anybody who has actually had Covid-19.
So here’s BBC correspondent Lucy Adams, who contracted the virus way back in March:
My limbs and head ached, my throat burned and my head was foggy… I could … walk the kids round the block to get them some fresh air but then I would sleep all afternoon.
After seven days my temperature went up from a fever of 37.7C (100F) to a burning hot 39.4C (103F) and stayed there for 10 days. The pain in my back was agony.
The illness lingered. I couldn’t sleep. I felt nauseous and had horrific abdominal pain. I sweated and shivered all the time. I couldn’t stand up but lying down was painful.
My daughter and I both got a full body rash and lost our sense of taste and smell.
Then came the breathlessness. First from walking up the stairs. Then just lying in bed, it felt impossible to fill my lungs.
Here’s the thing: it didn’t go away.
By the time I had been sick for seven weeks I remember telling my brother I felt ashamed for being off work for so long.
The NHS suggested Covid would last about two weeks yet I was still getting fevers and palpitations and so many other symptoms after two months.
And now – seven months later?
On good days I can go for a slow walk – pausing to sit on pavements and fallen trees to catch my breath. I can hold a conversation and pass myself off as fairly normal. On bad days it feels impossible to move from bed. The mattress feels like a ship rolling in a rough sea, my hands shake, my vision blurs, I struggle for breath, my body shivers and vibrates, and every sound cuts through my head like shattered glass.
I can still do things but every action has repercussions. If I empty the whole dishwasher at once I might get a migraine so I do one layer at a time. If I go for a walk, I have to go straight to bed afterwards. If I walk too far I might end up with a fever. Vertigo, brain fog, tremors and heart palpitations come and go as they please. And there’s the constant sinking fatigue – plus a gnawing anxiety because I don’t know when I will get better.
And no-one seems to know what is happening in my body.
Those are the words of a woman with so-called “Long Covid”. Does it read like ‘flu to you?
Alternatively, let’s consider somebody who had the short version of Covid-19. He nearly died – but of course that happens to people with ‘flu, too.
Here’s Michael Rosen – the ex-Children’s Laureate. He tweeted about his own experience after Spencer Morgan (whoever he is) suggested Covid was no worse than ‘flu:
My oxygen saturation level was 58. If my wife hadn’t taken me to A and E I would have died within hours. I had blood clots in my lungs and bleeds or clots in my brain. Lost sight in eye, hearing in ear, feeling in toes. Flu?
A couple of days ago, he reported a new development:
Ear Nose and Throat dept have looked at MRI scan of my ear and today told me they are fairly sure that a) Covid caused microbleeds in my brain which b) damaged my left auditory nerve (ie loss of hearing).
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to risk microbleeds in my brain that damage any of my senses.
I don’t want blood clots in my lungs. I don’t want to lose my sight, hearing, or the feeling in my toes.
I certainly don’t want vertigo, brain fog, tremors and heart palpitations that come and go as they please, and as a long-term sufferer of cluster headaches (now acknowledged by the NHS as the condition that causes the most excruciating pain a person can have) I absolutely do not want any more migraines.
So, hey, let’s all… I don’t know… give Covid-19 the benefit of the doubt, eh? And let’s do everything we can to make sure we can’t get it, and nobody near us spreads it to other people we know. I know it will be hard with the schools still open.
Let’s put on the masks; let’s keep our respective distances from people nearby. Let’s remember that it isn’t forever; it’s just for a little longer.
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#HeadAndShoulders: Boris Johnson’s terrible turnout is a disgrace to the nation.
Who knew?
The UK’s prime minister managed to distract everyone from his new nonsense policy that won’t keep us safe from Covid-19, simply by looking what he is – a mess.
And now everybody’s talking about the fact that our prime minister can’t wash and dress himself properly:
And Mr Speaker, with our new policy of scalp, shoulders, lapel we can justly claim to be head and shoulders above the rest of the world and look forward to a very white Christmas. pic.twitter.com/aj1ftrZk1G
I foresee times when Johnson will appear before the public with bad news – and also with no tie, or with his short untucked, or with his trousers at half-mast because he now knows that we’ll be so busy gossiping about the mess he‘s in…
… that we won’t realise he’s telling us the country is collapsing around us.
(Douglas Adams predicted this in The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, with reference to bad language: “In today’s modern Galaxy there is of course very little still held to be unspeakable….So, for instance, when in a recent national speech the Financial Minister of the Royal World Estate of Quarlvista actually dared to say that due to one thing and another and the fact that no one had made any food for a while and the king seemed to have died and most of the population had been on holiday now for over three years, the economy was now in what he called “one whole joojooflop situation,” everyone was so pleased that he felt able to come out and say it that they quite failed to note that their entire five-thousand-year old civilization had just collapsed overnight.”
(What a shame he never lived to see his comedy become a reality.)
Have YOU donated to my crowdfunding appeal, raising funds to fight false libel claims by TV celebrities who should know better? These court cases cost a lot of money so every penny will help ensure that wealth doesn’t beat justice.
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