UK Politics: Is The Johnson Government Finding Its Feet?

That depends on your political perspective. If you are a Tory maybe you feel just a little more confident, but if you are anything else, the list of failures grows with almost every passing hour. As I see it, amid muddle and misjudgment, the one bright success is the vaccination programme.

Having just had my first Pfizer jab (because I am so old in years, I think I am young at heart!) I was impressed with the speed, punctuality and smooth organization at the local surgery, normally a centerpiece for bad time keeping, congested parking and rushed consultations.

More and more media coverage focusses on the world beating roll out, driven by the reconstituted post Cummings Downing St. Press Office. So the government appears more confident, ministers more positive and above all, the bombastic optimism of Boris himself is replaced by a more measured and frank dialogue with the people. But the pandemic is not over, and the new caution suggests it may not be over by Easter. Hints are being dropped that it could still be causing restrictions  in the summer.

But even if Covid disruption vanishes from our lives altogether as the days become long and lazy, we are left with rebuilding a shattered economy, to a very different model. The hospitality, shopping and house price inflation set up, with all its attendant inequalities, food banks and child poverty, was on its last lap before anyone heard of Covid.

The notion of zero hours contracts and three jobs to pay the bills has to be replaced with a massive boost in public investment, plus high paying jobs through green re-industrialisation, backed by a transport and cyber connectivity revolution. All doable but not by a fuddled government. Then there is Brexit. And serious cracks in the structure of the Union. What a mess.

So I am jolly glad I am not a Tory. Because after nearly eleven  years in power, all the messes are of their making, driven by selfish ideology which puts individual advantage before the public good. Ever since the advent of Thatcherism, the state and its institutions have been starved of the resources to do their job properly.

Although Labour is not blameless, it was in power for 13 years, it is the Tories who have governed for 29 of the 42 years since the dawn of the Iron Lady. The outcome is a crisis in which the state has had to take control of everything, even how we spend our days. And every pound saved in so called efficiency savings over  four decades, will have been spent on stopping a total economic collapse, before the Covid/Brexit crisis is over.

You can sum it up with the slogan that we have to pull together to save the NHS.

The whole idea of the NHS in the first place was that it would be there to Save Us.