THE TORIES have pledged to dump all existing Covid restrictions in the next few weeks in England and ‘get life completely back to normal’.
On Wednesday, Boris Johnson announced that he was dumping his Plan B for dealing with the Covid virus, an announcement that had nothing to do with following the science but everything to do with saving Johnson’s political life.
Gone are even the minimum restrictions of Plan B and health secretary Sajid Javid yesterday told the press that all self-isolation will end saying: ‘I will come back in the spring and set out how we will live with Covid.’
Javid went on: ‘But the way we are going to do this is that we are going to have to find a way to remove almost all of these restrictions, and get life completely back to normal.’
Getting life back to normal for the Tories, is forcing workers and the middle class to live with a virus that is still raging throughout the country causing deaths and hospitalisations that are placing the entire National Health Service and the social care system at the brink of collapse.
This plan to ditch Plan B was rushed out in a state of panic by Johnson and the Tory leadership, at a time when Tory MPs are plotting like mad in anticipation of Johnson’s political demise.
This rushed panic move took place when the daily UK cases of coronavirus was above 108,000 on Wednesday and nearly 19,000 Covid patients are hospitalised, while Tuesday’s figures showed the UK has recorded 438 new coronavirus deaths, the highest daily total since 24 February last year, in a single day!
This is the ‘normalcy’ that Johnson and the Tories want the working class to learn to live with.
Johnson’s statement was roundly condemned by medical and teaching unions.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of the BMA, said ending restrictions could create a rebound and ‘risks creating a false sense of security at a time when the NHS is under crippling pressure’.
He added that ditching face masks ‘will inevitably increase transmission and place the public at greater risk, especially for those who are vulnerable’.
Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said that while the trend in secondary schools infections was down this could change, adding: ‘Such uncertainty could lead to a pronounced risk of increased disruption with children and staff having to isolate.’
Of course, under Javid’s policy no one will isolate and the virus will be given full reign to spread and possibly mutate creating new unknown variants.
None of this concerns Johnson, desperately attempting to cling on and keep the entire Tory government from collapse, proving to the bosses that he is prepared to put the lives of millions of workers and youth and the NHS at risk in order to reopen capitalism and keep profits rolling in.
In this, Johnson won the unqualified support of Labour leader Keir Starmer who assured Parliament that the Labour Party ‘does not want to see restrictions in place any longer than necessary’ adding ‘as long as science says that it is safe’. The man who the day before was calling for Johnson’s resignation was now falling over himself to prop him up.
Starmer’s support for Johnson and for the forced complete reopening of capitalism, is another move to offer himself and the Labour Party up as loyal supporters of a bankrupt capitalist system and eager to partner Tory MPs in a national government to take on the working class and inflict the capitalist crisis on their backs.
On Wednesday, Tory MP David Davis invoked the words of Leo Amery to then PM Neville Chamberlain in 1940 calling for Johnson: ‘In the name of God, go.’
In fact, this quote is ascribed to the great bourgeois revolutionary Oliver Cromwell and was aimed not just at the leader of the Rump Parliament in 1653 but to the entire Parliament.
The working class should follow Cromwell’s example and mobilise to kick out not just Johnson but the entire Tory government – going forward to a workers’ government and a planned socialist economy, required to eradicate Covid for good.