Alok Sharma draws the short straw and makes an April fool of himself
Well, it could have gone worse. Just.
In a parallel universe Chris Grayling could have spent his birthday – yup, Failing Grayling’s birthday really is April Fools’ Day – to be the government’s frontman at the Downing Street daily coronavirus briefing. Just imagine Grayling’s excitement at awarding a ventilator contract to a company that has no prospect of ever making a ventilator.
Still, that’s not much worse than the reality of the government having done sod all during January and February when it could have awarded contracts to companies that actually do make ventilators.
Back in No 10, there must be an inquest going on into whose bright idea it was to have a daily coronavirus press conference. What must have seemed like a show of strength and leadership when Boris Johnson and Classic Dom came up with the plan a week or so ago, now merely exposes the government’s lack of preparations and complete cluelessness every 24 hours.
What’s more, almost everyone in government knows it’s a disaster. Which is why most cabinet ministers switch their phones off for several hours every morning: because they don’t want to be the mug who winds up having to front the 45-minute embarrassment live on TV at 5pm.
So today’s press conference was fronted by Alok Sharma, who not even everyone in the cabinet knows is the current business secretary. Though he is a huge improvement on both Dominic “Psycho” Raab and Michael Gove, simply because he doesn’t have any of their associated instability and lack of trust issues. Put simply, Sharma is a man in whom the public can have complete confidence. The downside is that the confidence they have is that he can be guaranteed to know next to nothing about anything.
After stating the latest alarming death figures, Sharma lapsed into a whole range of generalities and platitudes. It’s come to something when even Donald Trump can see that the original “herd immunity” plan had been a disaster waiting to happen. Imagine being out-thought by the US Sun Bed God.
Sharma then handed over to Yvonne Doyle, the director of Public Health England, who raced through her four slides at breakneck speed. Largely because they were all so thoroughly depressing.
Believe it or not, that was actually the high point. The summit of gravitas and disinformation. Because from there on it was downhill all the way. Often these video press conferences can become atavistic with journalists asking a range of different questions that can easily be ignored. Either by merely answering the easiest question or one they wish had been asked. But now the lobby hunted as a pack, repeatedly pressing both Sharma and Doyle on the question of medical provision and testing.
And Sharma and Doyle had nothing. Not even blanks to fire. Sharma kept trying to palm off the difficult questions on to Doyle, who then did her best to refer them back to the business secretary. The medical is now political and the political is medical and neither side wants to take the blame.
To really regain the public’s trust, someone in government has to admit it basically did nothing for several months as it totally underestimated the crisis and was more interested in Boris’s sixth or seventh baby. But no one is prepared to do that so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
Why had Michael Gove insisted that thousands of ventilators were on their way next week when the actual figure is 30? Both Sharma and Doyle shrugged. Why were the Germans so far ahead of us on testing? Were we really so Little England that we thought we could learn nothing from Jerry? How come we only had tested 2,000 NHS staff out of about 1 million frontline workers? Again Sharma and Doyle just looked a little sheepish. Above their pay grades.
“Have you got anything more than warm words and good intentions?” one reporter asked. Sharma nodded earnestly. His words were going to get a lot, lot warmer – red-hot, even – and his intentions were going to be the best ever. You ain’t seen nothing yet. B-b-baby. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
