Boris Johnson’s legacy will be one of lies, contempt for the ordinary people he was supposed to protect, and above all presiding over the deaths of nearly 200,000 British people.
He will be remembered as the prime minister who skipped Cobra meetings and allegedly wanted to get himself jabbed with Covid-19 on live television to show it was no different to a cold while the virus was ripping through the country. He will be remembered as the prime minister who allowed our hospitals to become overwhelmed, leaving vulnerable patients at the mercy of the virus and an estimated 60,000 NHS staff with post-traumatic stress.
He will be remembered as the prime minister who unlawfully allowed hospital patients back into care homes without being tested, which meant that residents like my mum were like lambs to the slaughter. He will be remembered as the prime minister who then had to put the country into lockdown for nearly a year to salvage the disastrous situation he’d created. Perhaps worst of all, he’ll be remembered as the prime minister who repeated all of these mistakes in the second wave, leading to an even higher death toll than in the first.
Listening to Johnson still laughably claim that he “got the big calls right” on the pandemic is sickening. But lying and misinformation has been a cornerstone of his leadership. The fact that his rule coincided with a global pandemic when clear communications and trust in public institutions was more important than ever, is a tragedy.
“Boris” will now no doubt move on to a life of writing newspaper columns and being paid eye-watering amounts of money to give after-dinner speeches. Sadly, there will be no moving on for the families like mine that have been ripped apart by his actions.
I still find it hard to think about how painful my mum’s last days in April 2020 must have been, in her care home – just the same setting where a quarter of the residents died from Covid-19 and without any family able to visit. I also think of the care staff who had to endure such awful circumstances without adequate PPE. My mother passed away after a few days of enduring breathlessness, and Covid-19 was deemed the cause of her death, as it was for so many others. She was unable to have any family or friends by her side , because of the restrictions that were in place. Fortunately she did have a nurse with her, who witnessed her gasping for her final breaths. I am grateful for that, but many others would have died totally alone and frightened.
Meanwhile, the man ultimately responsible for protecting her was attending a party his aide had invited 100 people to at 10 Downing Street, having hosted a cheese and wine night a week earlier. After all this time I still find it devastating to think about my mum’s final days. I thought I was doing the right thing by not breaking the rules and visiting her, but it’s a decision I’ll think about for the rest of my life. That the prime minister broke those same rules so that he could have a drinks celebration and allow frat party behaviour is something I’ll never be able to forgive.
Johnson would like his legacy to be about his “levelling up agenda”, but when the pandemic struck, it was families in the north of England, like mine, that were hit the hardest. Research has shown that people living in northern England were more likely to die from Covid-19 than those in the rest of England, spent nearly six weeks more in lockdowns, suffered worse mental health and were made disproportionately poorer than the rest of the country during the first year of the pandemic.
His attitude to families like mine was best summed up when he allegedly said he wanted to “let the bodies pile high”. The truth is that his attitude towards ordinary people hasn’t changed since his days in the Bullingdon Club; he has nothing but disdain for people like me, who he views as weaker than him.
Although Johnson’s rule will shortly be coming to an end, his devastating impact on families like mine will not. He claimed yesterday that he was “immensely proud … of getting us all through Covid”. But who is “us” to him? The friends to whom he gave out lucrative PPE contracts? It’s certainly not like people like me, or the families of the 454 people who died from Covid-19 just last week. Nothing will bring my mum back and I have to live with the horrible circumstances of her death.
Instead I have hope in the Covid inquiry. I hope that it will finally bring the truth to light and that the thousands of bereaved families like mine can finally have some closure. Most of all I hope that the inquiry can teach us the lessons that will save lives in the future and mean that no prime minister will be able to repeat Johnson’s terrible mistakes and get away with it.
After years of delays, Lady Hallett’s inquiry will finally begin its hearings next year. I hope she’ll do the right thing and place families like mine at the heart of her findings.
Deborah Doyle is a spokesperson for the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign
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