Nice try Boris Johnson
I am reluctant to paint (or tar) an entire nation with a single brush. It looks too much like discrimination. Even so, there are things typically absent from British traditions that are common in American culture, and vice versa. The slavish devotion by some Americans to Donald Trump is a case in point. The flags, the MAGA hats, the cultish worship of one man is virtually unknown here.
Britons have always been practical about such things. They are reluctant to worship anyone or anything — apart from football. Only during the World Cup do the English flags materialise. When, at the end of World War II, Winston Churchill had outlived his usefulness, the British people unceremoniously gave him the old, unsentimental heave-ho.
Now, take Boris Johnson, a staunch admirer of Churchill, but who is himself no Churchill. The British people are eager to call him to account for his mishandling of the Covid crisis when he was Prime Minister, and Johnson has no cult followers to protest on his behalf. His just and public immolation proceeds on cue and without opposition. No one is around to cry “Witch hunt!” on his behalf.
And so without objection, Johnson’s legacy is rapidly becoming his epitaph at the hands of the UK Covid-19 Inquiry, an ongoing, independent public investigation of the United Kingdom’s response to, and the impact of, the COVID-19 pandemic. Johnson was recently called in to testify before the inquiry where he was uncharacteristically squirmy and embarrassed.
Johnson faced heavy, immediate boos and catcalls from members of the audience who lost loved ones in the pandemic and were not remotely interested in Johnson’s tepid apology. Johnson’s “apology” essentially amounted to this: he’s sorry that others weren’t more careful, a predictably inadequate mea culpa from a pitifully inadequate man.
The disgruntled spectators would not be silenced, so the presiding judge had to have them escorted from the building. It’s just as well that the bereaved families had their feelings known then and there, because, in the end, they are to receive no satisfaction and no real justice. Unfortunately, the principal aim of the COVID inquiry is to learn, not to blame. Johnson will face no legal consequences. No jail cell awaits him.
As with Donald Trump, hundreds of thousands of deaths lay at the feet of Boris Johnson thanks to his inept and frankly criminal mishandling of the Covid crisis. His delays in implementing a lockdown, his unserious approach to elder care, his deliberately putting vulnerable patients in harm’s way by exposing them to the infected, his notorious, Nero-like parties while Britain burned with Covid — these things are all well-known and properly reviled by virtually everyone here.
But the Metropolitan Police recently closed its investigation into Johnson and his cohorts with no recommendation for prosecution. So the families of the Covid dead in Britain will receive no real justice.
Boris Johnson is every inch the pathological liar that Donald Trump is, and every inch the Covid criminal. But unlike Trump Johnson will never see the inside of a jail cell for any reason. Johnson’s pathetic, victim-blaming apology will be hurled back in his face and his “legacy” will be reviled — forever. That’s the best we are going to get here and it’s just going to have to do. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.