Some tough questions to answer

Click on the image above to watch Sky News presenter Niall Paterson ask some tough questions to poor Robert Jenrick who is the unfortunate minister left holding the government to account.

I have to say that I’m not a great fan of the blame game, it’s more important to me that politicians recognise what lessons they have learned from this awful pandemic so that the same mistakes will never, ever be made again when the next one comes along.

You may not be surprised to read that I’m not a huge fan of this government but I do give credit to them for the furlough scheme and to the NHS in getting the vaccine program roll out moving so quickly. I would question some of the judgement calls made by our government during this pandemic and some ministers have been extremely poor in getting their messages across. 

I could mention the dreadfully belated response the government took in responding to the explosion of Covid that swamped our care homes early on, the shambolic world beating track and trace app that became a laughing stock, Dominic Cummings who broke all the rules and managed to come up with such a lame excuse that nobody (except his boss) thought was acceptable or 'Operation Moonshot' that disappeared into outer space never to be seen or heard of again. Nope, you won't hear me mention any of those moments of madness during the coronavirus crisis.

However to be fair and balanced it’s also probably true to say that no matter which political party was in power at the time of this pandemic it was inevitable that mistakes in dealing with it would have been made. 

It’s time for politicians to accept and acknowledge that mistakes were made in their decision making, albeit under extremely difficult circumstances in a worldwide pandemic. There’s no shame in admitting those mistakes, anyone with common sense can see it’s been an almost impossible job trying to manage the country in these unprecedented times.  

Over 100,000 lives lost in the UK due to Covid is such heartrendingly sad news. It is not the time for recrimination, for now it is more important that lessons have been learned from the way this pandemic has been managed so that we can prevent such a dreadful loss of life in the future.