With no scrutiny

With no scrutiny, the Government can get away with whatever it wants, bad policies and mistakes are spun, while the compliant press just report on what was said, rather than comparing with was just said and what was said by the same person a few days or weeks ago

In normal times, that the UK Government has lied on three different occasions as to why the country had not joined in with the EU ventilator procurement scheme would have been huge news.

Later it emerged that the invitation to take part in four rounds, so the UK could ramp up its own supply, not from the UK's market leader, but from companies like Dyson, JCB and so on, made for ideological reasons, based in Brexit, shows that dogma is being put before people's lives.

Weeks later, three months from the first EU meeting on ventilators, there is not enough in the UK, and the minister responsible gave two different figures to two different news organisations this morning.

It would appear that Johnson and co think it more important not to have been seen to rely on the EU for help and would rather let people die in their thousands instead. Think of that when your Mum of Gran is in the ICU.

And then there is testing. Michael Gove last night said testing had not reached desired levels due to problems in the chemical supply chain. Which was news to the Chemical Supply Industry body who tweeted surprise.

Failure to test the population or even front line NHS staff will result in many more un-necessary deaths. The UK Government knew of this in January, and had many weeks to prepare and ramp up manufacturing and supplies. But did nothing, other than to let people have freedom of movement and so cross-infections carried on at pace.

And Parliament has closed itself, meaning there is no scrutiny on what the Government has been doing, or not been doing. And people continue to fall ill and die.

Most of what we have seen, and it will get worse, was avoidable, and having a competent leader would have made a huge difference. But restrictions and policies were enacted too late, people mixed, passed the virus round.

We might not be in as bad a place as the US, but that is little comfort when we could have saved thousands or tens of thousands more lives. That Toby Young advoacted letting old and infirm people dying because, "they were going to die soon anyway" shows those with the PM's ear and the Government itself cares very little for the little people. Never did.