A Bankrupt Government in mind and money.

Covid Cavaliers

"Your whole mind is occupied by a seething anxiety that things are going to go badly because il principle, or whatever little worshipfulness is in charge today, is not very good at the base business of thinking." Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall

I pulled Wolf Hall out of the bookshelves. I needed something to while away the hours and the book has been lavished with universal praise as the best book of the 21st century. The intrigue and callousness in the court of the Tudors reminded me of our present government's attempts to obtain a divorce from the EU and its serial failures to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. It's just that Hilary Mantel would have written a far better script and the actors would have been so much better. Boris Johnson lacks the zealousness of Henry VIII and Dominic Cummings is far less cunning than Thomas Cromwell.

We are in week 12 of lockdown and as the story of how the government and its advisers have responded to the COVID-19 pandemic begins to emerge it confirms all our fears of gross incompetence and a total absence of operational management experience. The cabinet is totally lacking any minister with serious knowledge or ethical principles that are essential in dealing with events of this kind. It does not stop them acting with impunity and throwing money at initiatives that could have been scripted for Only Fools and Horses.

 

The Health Minister, Matt Hancock, seems to be in his element as he surfs the airwaves behaving like the great redeemer. His insatiable ability to twist the truth and bring in friends and donors to help with the procurement of PPE has been flabbergasting.  The stockpiles of PPE should have been maintained by his predecessor Jeremy Hunt several years ago. Hancock and Sunak's involvement in creating and then allowing ministers to use a fast track for willy-nilly contracts for equipment will not end well. And how could Hancock appoint someone with a CV like Dido Harding to be let loose with a Test and Trace budget of £22bn. Her track record in management is woeful with her greatest hits including the scandal at Talk Talk when it lost the personal details of 3m customers and letting the Cheltenham Races proceed and escalate the spread of Covid. Don't hold your breath for Test and Trace to be a success. 

Rishi Sunak is doling out the money from the Money Tree that Theresa May never found, Whilst the speed of his response has been impressive, I am far less certain that he has thought it through. There will be many thousands of Del Boys in the city and MPs' friends and associates who take the money and run, I doubt the taxpayers will ever see it again. I also fear that the inquiry into Johnson's Covid omnishambles will not see the light of day anytime before the next General Election.

Fact-checking whatever happened will require the involvement of the BBC and other institutions that are more transparent than the government and the phalanx of organisations and regulators that it controls but The mendacity of this abysmal government seems to have no limits.

When Matt met Dido