London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Wednesday, Oct 29, 2025

Boris Johnson isn’t the only one to blame for Britain’s Covid crisis

Boris Johnson isn’t the only one to blame for Britain’s Covid crisis

Britain has suffered one of the world’s highest Covid death tolls and worst Covid recessions. It has managed this abysmal feat despite spending nearly £300bn on countering the virus, a sum far greater than almost any other comparable country.

We have achieved the triple crown of medical, economic and fiscal failure because of a reason that is under-discussed: the lethal divisions on the right.

They have paralysed the government, and condemned thousands to premature deaths and needless suffering. Yet we do not see them with the clarity we should because of our skewed culture. Conservative titles dominate the written media, and for reasons I will get to, opposition to public health is far more likely to be found on the right than the left. Meanwhile broadcasters’ conceptions of ‘impartiality’ ensure that doctors and epidemiologists must always be ‘balanced’ by know-nothing ideologues and base-pleasing hacks.

Perhaps foreign observers can see clearly how weird contemporary Britain is. We natives do not because our media culture has made marginal and cranky views appear mainstream and natural. The real-world consequences of the divisions in the ruling party between Conservative realists and, for want of a better word, ‘libertarians’ remain, unfortunately, all-too clear.

Watching this government has been like watching bad slapstick. What makes the routine both tiresome and deadly is that it is always slipping on the same banana skin; always crashing the same clown car. When the Covid outbreak escalated in February, once again in the autumn, and once again before Christmas, scientists and medics warned that we needed to lock down.

Each time, Johnson tried to ignore them and pressed on until the car hit the wall or his foot hit the banana skin, and he went cartwheeling through the air carrying the country with him

At the start of the pandemic, Michael J Ryan of the World Health Organisation said:

‘The lesson I have learned after so many Ebola outbreaks in my career are be fast, have no regrets. You must be the first mover. The virus will always get you if you don’t move quickly…If you need to be right before you move, you will never win. Perfection is the enemy of the good when it comes to emergency management. The greatest error is not to move.’

Yet this government has never moved fast enough. It thought the pandemic would be over by the summer or by Christmas and now, Johnson has suggested, by Easter. It engaged in the absurd pretence that we could have a cheap meal on Rishi Sunak to celebrate Covid’s passing, and then had to close down the country again. It thought it could have the perfection of protecting the economy and public health and ended up doing neither. Why?

It’s not as if the public does not understand the need for tough measures. The cumulative Covid death toll is now heading past 75.000 and will doubtless hit 100,000. If you don’t know someone who has died, you will know someone who has been grievously ill. YouGov found yesterday that 79 per cent of people surveyed supported a new lockdown while only 16 per cent opposed one.

I could explain the failure to act by citing the Prime Minister’s egregious faults: his laziness, the mendacity that led Rory Stewart to describe him as ‘the most accomplished liar in public life’ and his pathetic willingness to please. They would be intolerable vices for a leader in normal times. They are a threat to the nation’s security in a crisis.

Yet pleasurable and essential though it is, harping on about Johnson is too easy. I and other anti-Tory journalists have attacked his faults so many times we could write our condemnations in our sleep. But our preoccupation with the Prime Minister’s failings risks missing the wider damage caused by the hopelessly fractured right.

I am making a guess here but the 16 per cent of people who oppose a lockdown are likely to be conservatives in the broadest sense. The honourable explanation for their hostility is that the right cares more about civil liberties than the left, and there may be truth in that.

Less palatable for conservatives to accept is that no one on the left, whatever fantasies they might possess, can contemplate allowing the NHS to be overwhelmed. They cannot diminish Covid, as some right-wing commentators have diminished it, by implying we should not worry about it overmuch because it almost always kills the over-60s or patients with existing medical conditions.

Nor can the overwhelming majority of the population and many Conservative politicians and supporters. (Conservative voters are more likely to be over-60 and more likely to be frightened, after all.)

The brute political fact remains, however, that opposition to Covid restrictions has come almost exclusively from the Conservative party and Nigel Farage and his supporters on the wider right. To quote one example from many, in November, Johnson had to reassure Conservative rather than Labour or nationalist MPs that he had ‘every reason’ to believe ‘the worst is nearly behind us’ – and how well those words read today.

He was trying to head off the only organised opposition to stricter public health measures in Parliament. It came in the form of the 70-strong Covid Recovery Group, formed to oppose restrictions. Its members are Tory MPs just as attacks on public health measures in the media almost exclusively come from right-wing commentators and outlets.

The historian Tim Bale coined the useful phrase ‘the party in the media’ to emphasise how closely Conservative politicians must attend to the Telegraph, Mail, Sun and indeed this fine magazine.

Boris Johnson is, of course, as much a creation of the Conservative media as Conservative MPs. But the point I think is being missed is that any Conservative prime minister would have been forced to appease the denialist wing of right-wing opinion in politics and the press.

As a thought experiment, imagine an alternative Britain where Boris Johnson was not prime minister and the country had a choice between Jeremy Hunt and Keir Starmer to lead us through the pandemic. On paper, Hunt looks the better candidate. He spent years as Health Secretary and knows the NHS as well as any politician in Westminster. But Starmer would still be the better choice.

Whatever he thought privately, Hunt would have to cope with the civil war on the right, which had already destroyed the premierships of David Cameron and Theresa May, and appease his enemies by dithering and delaying as Johnson has done.

By all means carry on laying into Johnson, if you wish. I intend to carry on myself. But do not miss the wider problem. Britain’s tragedy is that it was hit by a pandemic at a time when its Conservative ruling class was too divided to cope with it effectively.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
China and Russia Deploy Seductive Espionage Networks to Infiltrate U.S. Tech Sector
Apple’s ‘iPhone Air’ Collapses After One Month — Another Major Misstep for the Tech Giant
Graham Potter Begins New Chapter as Sweden Head Coach on Short-Term Deal
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa Alleges Poison Plot via Chocolate and Jam
Lakestar to Halt External Fundraising as Investor in Revolut and Spotify
U.S. Innovation Ranking Under Scrutiny as China Leads Output Outputs but Ranks 10th
Three Men Arrested in London on Suspicion of Spying for Russia
Porsche Reverses EV Strategy as New CEO Bets on Petrol and Hybrids
Singapore’s Prime Minister Warns of ‘Messy’ Transition to Post-American Global Order
Andreessen Horowitz Sets Sights on Ten-Billion-Dollar Fund for Tech Surge
US Administration Under President Donald Trump Reportedly Lifts Ban on Ukraine’s Use of Storm Shadow Missiles Against Russia
×