A woman's place appears to be anywhere but the Downing Street press briefing
Coronavirus is man’s work. At least, that appears to be the government’s assessment of it, for in the three weeks of daily Downing Street press briefings, not once has a woman minister been allowed out to be front-of-house compere. Priti Patel, Liz Truss and Thérèse Coffey have become all but invisible. Missing in action. They might as well not exist.
For the third time this week it was Dominic Raab – the de facto prime minister while Boris Johnson is in intensive care – who did the business for the government. And, to be fair, he’s getting visibly better at it. He looks less unstable and more the man who can easily see out 24 hours of close police interrogation over unsolved missing persons cases. Though he might have struggled if anyone had questioned him about the disappearance of the home secretary.
It also helped that the foreign secretary didn’t have any news, other than the grim daily death statistics, to impart. So he could stick to doing what he knows best, which is spilling out a random series of words, only some of which amount to fully coherent sentences. At some point in his career, the black-belt martial arts specialist is going to have to realise that the brain is also a muscle. Coming up with lines like “We are focusing on the things we need to focus on” may sound impressive at cabinet meetings, but doesn’t translate well to those of us who speak human.
Still, after Raab had spent the best part of five minutes telling everyone to stay at home for Easter – the No 10 lectern had been helpfully updated with this new logo – it did become clear why Patel might have dodged a bullet by being excluded from this briefing. Because Raab went on to deliver a long thank-you to all the NHS staff, care workers, hospital cleaners, delivery drivers and supermarket staff who were keeping people alive and the country running: the very people who would never have been let into the country if the home secretary had been allowed to implement her points-based immigration system a few years earlier. For Priti, ideology is all. She didn’t vote to take back control to have an immigrant clean a hospital floor or operate a supermarket checkout.
“We now know who the key workers really are,” said Raab. Indeed we did. And to the surprise of many Tory MPs, they weren’t the hedge-fund managers or party donors they had imagined. Here Raab’s legendary ability to dissociate came in handy. Because back in 2010, he, Patel and several other leading Tories wrote a book, Britannia Unchained, in which they advocated increased austerity, doubling down on laissez-faire economics and branded the Brits as some of the idlest people in the world.
But some things don’t change. Asked if the government might care to show its gratitude to the key workers with a cash bonus once the pandemic was over, Raab became evasive. Money, what money? Wasn’t it enough for these workers to have saved the country before being asked to leave? At times like these, Dom could almost be a double for David Brent. “The bad news is that some of you will lose your jobs. On a more positive note, the good news is that I’ve been promoted – so every cloud, eh?”
Not that Raab seemed overly keen to emphasise the extent of his new powers as de facto prime minister. If anything, he tried to downplay them, suggesting that all cabinet decisions were now more like tantric meditation sessions.
Unfortunately, the answers provided by that process can be less than crystal clear. Raab was as evasive on what the government strategy for determining the timing of the end of the partial lockdown might be – journalists have long since given up asking for an actual date – as he was on why the government had had to increase its overdraft with the Bank of England. Where was Rishi when you needed him?
Related: Tell us: how have you been affected by the coronavirus?
The biggest unanswered question, though, was the one that has been left hanging over every press conference. Why is Germany handling the crisis so much better than us? Some projections suggest the German death rate from the coronavirus will be about 10% of ours. What’s their secret? Raab, Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance all just shrugged their shoulders. They had no idea. Or none fit for public consumption.
You could almost sense the desperation in Dom’s voice as he pleaded one last time for calm over Easter. Being in charge isn’t nearly so much fun as he had imagined. He’s missing Boris badly. Weirdly, I am too. At least with Boris you get some kind of hopeful bollocks. With Raab you just get bollocks. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
