2020 Vision: It's Breaking Bad

Storm Dennis hides missing PM and fends off coronavirus

If 2020 was meant to be about vision then it has been a total failure so far. As Storm Dennis blasts its way across Britain leaving floods, damaged properties and further dilapidated infrastructure in its wake, we can only dream of progress. The UK has chronic myopia.

• We are unprepared to cope with Coronavirus according to 98% of NHS staff interviewed, UK nationals were left on the badly infected cruise ship off Japan when most other countries had arranged flights home for their citizens. 
• Meanwhile, stock markets around the world have lost 3-4% of their value today with much more likely to come as manufacturing in China, tourism and travel have seen massive drops with the fear of a pandemic being declared.
• Progress on re-establishing government in Northern Ireland has been stymied by the sacking of Julian Smith, the first Northern Ireland minister since 2010 who has earned the respect of the province. 
• The government's Fair Funding Review for council funding could see massive cuts for northern towns and cities. Liverpool -16%, Manchester -14%, and Newcastle -12% are northern cities amongst the biggest losers whilst Windsor +20 %, Buckinghamshire +17%, Gloucestershire +15% and Surrey +13% are the biggest winners. So much for the government's fabled commitment to the northern powerhouse or levelling up.
• The UK has been accused of failing to prepare for the 2020 climate change conference (COP26) in Glasgow.  The UK government has sacked the chair and fallen out with the Scottish Government over funding and is now considering whether to change the location, I would suggest Norway.
• HS2 has been given the go-ahead as far as Birmingham, and maybe Crewe but decisions on that will have to wait as will the extension to the northern cities of Manchester and Leeds. As for the 50% of the total track length to Glasgow and Edinburgh on which the trains are at their slowest and there is the greatest scope for reducing travel times, well that will have to wait for Godot.  
• Meanwhile, we are still on course to expand Heathrow despite its serious impact on air pollution and climate change and huge costs that will in part be publicly funded, diverting even more funds from the north and other countries in this Disunited Kingdom. Heathrow is already the airport most people outside the south-east avoid as a hub because it is so much less efficient and subject to delays than customer-friendly hubs like Frankfurt, Amsterdam or even Paris.
• Death rates in the UK are now increasing, there is a mumps epidemic and NHS waiting times have reached their all-time high.
• Priti Patel has introduced an immigration policy that is so fundamentally flawed that even some of the tabloids have taken umbrage. Her bungled attempts to dismiss and undermine her civil servants merely confirm that she is totally unsuited to be an MP or minister, let alone the Home Secretary.
• PM Johnson has gone AWOL during the floods, cabinet reshuffle and coronavirus pandemic. His government's lamentable decisions on HS2, Council funding, immigration, COP26 and negotiations on future trade agreements are a harbinger of a catastrophic Covid future.  

At the very time we desperately need some leadership laced with uninhibited entitlement, bombast, pomp and ceremony, even the UK's most elite establishment institutions are in free fall. The Royal Family is furiously defending its entitlement by sacrificing its loose cannons, namely the sixth and seventh in line to the throne. Harry, the Duke of Sussex, has volunteered for the colonies and Andrew, the randy old Duke of York, has generously deferred his promotion to Admiral as his 60th birthday present. We are left facing coronavirus with a government of Boris Johnson's cronies, some prospect!