Things look messier every day.
This week has seen the Unions rearing their ugly heads as they look to capitalise on the fear of Coronavirus that the Government created as a long list of destructive consequences of the Lockdown marches into public view.
We know our children are losing out.
We know that the Chancellors massive cash giveaway is delaying the inevitable and putting redundancies on ice.
We know that Billionaires have cashed in on the Job Retention Scheme to pay furloughed staff that they could afford to pay.
We know that Governments around the World including ours are pointing the finger of blame for the Coronavirus Pandemic at China whilst falling over themselves to embrace them in financially beneficial ways.
That’s all we can see right now.
You couldn’t write this stuff. As a parody offered to TV, this script would get you laughed out of the office before you could finish your pitch.
Yet this is how our Government thinks the UK should be run.
At the beginning of the emergenc, the only thing that people were actively encouraged to think about was staying at home to stay safe. The Government manipulation worked so well it became inevitable that people would have to be burnt by the fag ends of the Government’s inept policies before they would realise that anything was wrong with what was being done.
Those burns have started to hurt. There are finally questions being asked about what is next to come.
What the very clever people who advise Boris Johnson didn’t understand is you can control the things that cause fear, but you have no control over what fear then does when it reaches the mind.
The fear of Coronavirus that the Government deliberately created in the minds of so many people to ensure compliance with the Lockdown is already out of control and taking on a life of its own.
If the Government doesn’t do all that is necessary to turn the situation around whilst it remains able to do so, the assumed role of leadership against resuming schooling for our children that the Unions and members of the medical profession have taken will merely be a taste of what is yet to come.
The challenge the Government faces is that the Unions are firing shots, but Boris loaded the gun.
As long as the Johnson Government continues to pursue an agenda of control of COVID-19 instead of returning life to its new normal and managing cases of the Virus as, when and where they are suffered as they always should have done, the momentum from fear of Coronavirus can be picked up and run with by whoever decides to try.
Coming clean and telling us all that the Government went the wrong way and that we all now need to live with the risk is the only way that Boris will stop these dogs from barking for a good while to come.
Ending the Lockdown completely and in full right now will not stop the financial crisis that it started. But it will prevent other reckless, self-serving and publicity seeking people who are abusing their position from making the whole situation for everyone else even worse.
It is only by ending the Lockdown and letting us all return to our ‘normal’ lives that Government can begin to address and begin clearing up the massive mess that has it has made.
The best way to start is for Boris to be honest and stop blagging us into a deeper and deeper crisis – as should have been the case right at the start.
Adam Tugwell 