Covid-19 Exit Strategy - Fawkes Backs Labour

As Keir Starmer just found out, when in your hour of greatest need, the enemy comes running to your rescue. The Tories have come galloping today, and what has made their move all the worse is that the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog, normally the most ultra-loyal of Tory loyalists, has sided with Labour.

Starmer believes that there should be an exit strategy, a way out of the lockdown which the UK has endured for more than three weeks as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, and which will most likely have to be endured for several weeks more. So, as the BBC has reported, “The Labour leader has written to Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Prime Minister Boris Johnson while he continues his recovery from coronavirus, to say Labour would support a continuation of the [lockdown] measures”.

However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, “he said [that] the government needed to set out an exit strategy to maintain trust and to ensure that arrangements are in place for it”. He told Radio 4 “We've got to have the trust of the public … For that trust there needs to be transparency and openness - they need to know what the thinking is on when lockdown will end”. People need to see a way out.

I've been backed by WHO?

Then he got his ideas in first: “Mass testing and then tracing is likely to be amongst the options for ending the lockdown … If that is right we need the government to say so because decisions need to be taken now to make sure that the number of tests that are needed and that the arrangements are in place so they can be implemented”.

Sadly for the Tories, “The government said talking about an exit before the virus had reached its peak risks confusing the public”. So the public are too stupid to understand? Don’t tell Brendan O’Neill! Priti Patel made matters worse. “We'd all love to be able to spread a great deal of optimism and say: 'This is going to end on X date’”. Starmer is not asking for that. He is asking for the Government to outline an exit strategy.

Er, s-s-sorry Number Two, it won't happen again

After the Tory excuses came the damnation of the Fawkes massive, with The Great Guido concluding “Starmer says he ‘doesn’t accept this’, Guido tends to agree, infantalising the public as too stupid to follow a debate about the exit strategy is bad politics, it is arrogant as well. The public need to understand the logic of lockdown ending, a reasonable debate with a reasonable opposition would be a good start. Of course if the government doesn’t have an exit strategy …”. The Fawkes blog describes Starmer as “Quite reasonable”.

We now have a Government, and several ministers, who do not understand the difference between having a strategy, and making time-specific commitments to undertake specific actions. This is Business Studies 101, and thus far, Dominic Raab, Priti Patel, Laura Trott, and the ubiquitous “Prime Minister’s spokesman” have flunked the exam.

This organisation does not tolerate failure, Mister Raab

And they have now lost the support of the group blog formerly so loyal to the Tories that Peter Oborne called it “the provisional wing of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party press office” (although The Great Guido has ascribed no guilt to Johnson, and nor will he).

Perhaps Dominic Cummings is trying to tell Raab something. Like “You’re next, matey”.

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