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Other countries managed it and have far fewer dead. Why couldn't the Tories? Why was Boris crowing about how many hands he'd shaken? The numbers speak for themselves, this has been handled catastrophically badly.
Boris, in his Greenwich speech, one week after coronavirus had been declared a 'Public Health Emergency of
International Concern' said that he wasn't going to close UK down but the UK was going to take off the Clark Kent spectacles and take over the world. And when the UK papers were saying how dreadful Italy was doing with the virus, rather than learn from their problem Boris just put his head down and ignored it.
this is a quote from the speech from the gov.uk website
'when barriers are going up, and when there is a risk that new diseases such as coronavirus will trigger a panic and a desire for market segregation that go beyond what is medically rational to the point of doing real and unnecessary economic damage, then at that moment humanity needs some government somewhere that is willing at least to make the case powerfully for freedom of exchange, some country ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles and leap into the phone booth and emerge with its cloak flowing as the supercharged champion, of the right of the populations of the earth to buy and sell freely among each other.
And here in Greenwich in the first week of February 2020, I can tell you in all humility that the UK is ready for that role. We are ready for the great multi-dimensional game of chess in which we engage in more than one negotiation at once and we are limbering up to use nerves and muscles and instincts that this country has not had to use for half a century.
Secretary of State Liz Truss tells me she has the teams in place: She has the lawyers, top dollar I’ve no doubt, the economists, trade policy experts and if we don’t have enough, or if they don’t perform, believe me we will hire some more.'