Kmflett's Blog

COVID & Boris Johnson March 2020: ‘a feeling of British exceptionalism in Downing St’

The quote comes from former Labour MP Jon Ashworth in an interesting Guardian piece on Downing St and COVID in 2020. It reveals that the virus was widespread at the centre of Government in Whitehall as Boris Johnson havered over lockdown measures:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/mar/12/no-10-plague-pit-how-covid-brought-westminster-to-its-knees

On Monday 16^th March 2020 Johnson suggested people avoid pubs and theatres (I’d been in a London pub on Sunday 15^th March- the Cock Tavern in Hackney and didn’t go into one again until July-the same pub as it happens). On 20^th March 2020 he ordered them to close and on Monday 23^rd March he announced the first lockdown.

Yet it was all late. COVID was already widespread in the community-certainly in London. As the Guardian article notes numbers may have had it but getting a test was virtually impossible.

However many, myself included, started to act before Johnson. I cancelled a socialist history seminar at the Institute of Historical Research on 16^th March (the building was open) and also a London union officers committee meeting in central London I was due to chair the previous week. In both cases there was a sense that getting people together in small rooms was not a great idea.

It was still happening in Downing St though.

On Friday 12^th March I attended the annual Bernie Grant Memorial meeting in Tottenham. It was packed with hundreds of people and I felt uneasy. I’m not aware though of a significant COVID spike related to it, thankfully. At this stage the precautions stage was at elbow bumps rather than handshakes. Social distancing and masks were a way off.

Probably the thing that really brought home how far Johnson was behind much of public sentiment was the start of the cancellation of Premiership football matches.

The game between Spurs and Manchester United on Sunday 15^th March was much anticipated. It was cancelled at short notice. As often business (which is what Premiership football mostly is)was in front of Johnson acting.

He stuck to his Podsnappery, ‘Not English’ line that COVID restrictions were for *other* countries for another week. As a result many more got ill, died and suffered long term illness than might have been the case.