One crucial moment in Boris Johnson’s speech (PM’s post-coronavirus speech: what he said, and what it means, 27 April) was when he framed the crisis using the following analogy: “If this virus were … an unexpected and invisible mugger, which I can tell you from personal experience it is…”
Already, then, it seems the narrative is being seeded that all of this was somehow unavoidable – that the UK, under his leadership, is somehow an innocent victim of an epidemiological crime that we couldn’t have seen coming. This is from a man who actively boasted of shaking hands with coronavirus patients. This is from a man at the helm when we missed a crucial opportunity to get ahead of the curve by going hard and early. This is from a man whose party was warned in 2016 and 2019 about the potential dangers of – and required preparation for – a pandemic and failed to act accordingly. If the virus truly were a mugger then the UK, under his leadership, would be the sucker who walked down a dark alley at midnight waving a wallet in the air.
Colin Montgomery
Edinburgh
• A more appropriate comparison than “an unexpected and invisible mugger” was made by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam (The UK’s coronavirus policy may sound scientific. It isn’t, 25 March) when they likened Covid-19 to an avalanche. On 25 January they had called for a cautious approach to the virus, including constraints on mobility and a rapid investment in preparedness, pointing out that when an avalanche may be heading in your direction “you just get out of the way”.
Ian McCauley
Ryde, Isle of Wight
• The most striking element of Boris Johnson’s speech was the lack of any remorse or apology for the mistakes made by his government, or any acknowledgment that these errors have resulted in more people dying of Covid-19. Instead we got platitudes about how well the government has been dealing with the crisis and how the lockdown has helped prevent the NHS from being overwhelmed. There was a smugness and self-satisfied note about the speech which rankled and which suggests he has not unearthed any sort of personal humility as a result of his brush with death.
I hope Keir Starmer takes Johnson to task in the Commons about the government’s many shortcomings: the lack of PPE, inadequacy of testing, the appalling situation in care homes, the delay in the start of the lockdown and why the PM thought it acceptable to spend time at Chevening and Chequers when he should have been chairing meetings of Cobra and preparing properly for the pandemic.
Mike Pender
Cardiff
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