‘I’ve given you the most important metric – never mind life-expectancy, never mind cancer outcomes – look at WAGE GROWTH!’
Lizzie has just shown me a clip of Boris Johnson saying the above. It was a couple of months ago, I think (I’m not sure how we managed to miss it at the time).
Did Boris Johnson really mean this? Never mind life-expectancy? Never mind cancer outcomes?
It boggles the mind.
I want to give Boris the benefit of the doubt. I want to think he means…
‘Let’s not talk about the cancer statistics at the moment. Not because they’re unimportant and I’m forgetting they exist, but because right now I want to focus on this other kind of statistic. We’ll get back to the very important cancer statistics another time. I promise.’
I want to believe he means this, rather than…
‘Let’s just completely forget about people with cancer. They’re meaningless! And pointless! Let’s all pretend they don’t exist!’
But what if he does mean the latter? What if the man leading the country really thinks we should simply forget about all the cancer-sufferers?
Lizzie and I look at each other, her laptop on the table between us. Did Boris really mean it? Lizzie has mentioned, several times recently, that she feels the government’s policy to let Covid rip through the land isn’t really aimed at helping people like her – the vulnerable. They are the collateral damage of hoped-for herd immunity.
Are Boris’s words an actual admission of this?
It’s impossible to know, for certain.
In fact, in regard to this whole sorry business, there’s only one thing we can be 100% certain about.
Boris Johnson is a dickwad.
P. D. Clifton 
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