Johnson's cheerfulness proves Brexit is behind Covid

Still space for a little hate session in the Guardina today. In one of the least surprising headlines ever, P Toynbee (or a sub) declares:

Boris Johnson is the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time 

the Sunday Times didn’t even wait for him to stumble back to Downing Street before firing off its devastating attack on his cavalier incompetence over the coronavirus outbreak... it chimes with everything everyone [!] already knows [!] about Boris Johnson’s character....There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning

Toynbee's 'knowledge' of Johnson's character reveals one of those npb skilled readings of character, of what 'really' informs his actions 'in effect'.

Exaggerated or not [!], hearing that the prime minister took two weeks’ holiday at Chevening as the virus began to spread in the UK will stick in the public memory....But this we know [again]: our government is singularly unsuited to the task and unfit for purpose. In his absence, Johnson’s lack of seriousness is reflected in his abysmal choice of cabinet, selected for all the wrong reasons. Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Elizabeth Truss and the rest were chosen for Brexitry and hatred of the state....Brexit embodied their mindset: break away, break things and disrupt.

Meanwhile, the cad seems unfairly happy about something -- his personal survival? Toynbee wants hypocritical public gloom?

Michael Gove reported on Sunday that the prime minister is “in cheerful spirits”, but that’s bafflingly inappropriate. Cheerful? About what? Good croquet on the blossom-strewn Chequers lawns?  There are scores of dead doctors and nurses among some 20,000 dead citizens, and rising. 

 His incompetence was based on his 'natural antipathy towards the state', and includes:

bungled ventilator procurement [leading to] products unfit for Covid-19 patients...[U]nder austerity [so Cameron and Osborne really?] , there was a deliberate 40% cut in emergency personal protective equipment stockpiled for an epidemic.... a three-day epidemic simulation in 2016, Exercise Cygnus, ... uncovered a critical shortage of intensive care beds, morgue capacity and PPE...[T]he failure to test, trace, isolate and treat every single case [!], which the World Health Organization now [!] says should be a pre-condition before countries loosen their lockdowns.

Newsnight led the BBC to demand nightly more and more ventilators of any kind, regardless of their fitness for Covid patients, of course. 

Toynbee does admit that

No government could be fully ready for this: future lessons will be learned from South Korea and others.

But the main conclusion is as predictable as ever:

When the prime minister returns, his single most reassuring act would be to prolong immediately the Brexit transition

In allied if opposing news, and turning to Corbynist paranoia for a change, the Canary has suggested that the ST article has also been much cited by every other Fleet Street dog as a despairing move to preserve traditional newspapers:

a growing cry of corporate journalists pleading with people not to share snippets of the article without linking to it.

Of course, for the Canary:

The blame for the unfolding catastrophe coronavirus has brought can be laid at the corporate press’s door. Because without them (and a healthy dose of some in the Labour Party actively undermining Corbyn), Johnson wouldn’t have been in charge during this in the first place.

We can acquit P Toynbee and much of the rest of el Gordino  of that accusation, of course,although I still think that much of their irritating posturing had a reverse psychology effect.