THREAD: Boris Johnson favours military & crime metaphors when talking about the coronavirus ("war against the virus", "the invisible assailant", "mugger", etc.).
They're stupid & misleading, but let's just take them at face value for a moment... 1/
They're stupid & misleading, but let's just take them at face value for a moment... 1/
2/ Let’s suppose that Britain had fallen victim to a series of terrorist attacks & that, before mounting these attacks in the UK, the group responsible had carried out similar attacks in other countries & announced its intention to murder as many UK citizens as it could…
3/ … and that intelligence agencies in these other countries had implored the UK to take these threats seriously and take urgent steps against this group, & had shared key intelligence about measures that had proved effective…
4/ … which had then been ignored by a government that had decided instead to deal with this threat by carrying on as normal, confident that its citizens would “take it on the chin”…
5/ …until confronted by the early results of this policy in the shape of hundreds of unnecessary deaths, at which point – far too late – it had reversed its “take it on the chin” approach and tried to start proactive measures to stop the slaughter…
6/ ... but had done this chaotically and ineffectually, sending unarmed forces to confront heavily armed terrorists, with predictably deadly results for those trying to defend its citizens…
7/ … and had completely failed to use its domestic intelligence services to identify and keep track of these ruthless terrorists, now dispersed over every region of the country and continuing to kill hundreds of people every day…
8/ … how could such a government pretend that its hopelessly inadequate response to such an attack, reflected in over 50,000 people killed (latest “cautious” FT estimate), could possibly be interpreted at some kind of victory?
9/ We've now lost more citizens than were lost in the Blitz, the N. Ireland conflict, the Falklands War, the Iraq conflict, the Afghan conflict & in all UK terrorism since 2003.
It's not a war but if it were it would be a total catastrophe - & it's down to terrible leadership.
It's not a war but if it were it would be a total catastrophe - & it's down to terrible leadership.
