Our leaders blame others to cover their own failings

Our political rulers hope that the current bluster about ‘anti-vaxxers’ will create a fog in which their inadequacies are hidden.

The zeitgeist on the European continent at the start of the year was to accuse Britain of cutting corners to get a flying start on rolling out vaccinations, pouring cold water on the early-approval process. Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel both publicly trashed the product from AstraZeneca, over-stating the safety risks and under-stating the extent to which it can help the vulnerable to evade severe disease.

Yet now Macron has turned his ire on people who thus far have not accepted the offer of a jab (sometimes eerily referred to as ‘the unvaccinated’), whilst gamely pretending, serious poker face and all, that the enormous elephant in the room, namely his own stoking of vaccine reluctance, has disappeared down a memory hole.

Whilst he has not gone as far as the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, and ranted about unlawfully confining people to their homes on the grounds of injection status, Macron sulks like a fed-up parent who finds himself resorting to divide and conquer out of frustrated incompetence at the realisation that the will of others cannot be assumed.

During the Covid-19 pandemic this has become routine. Political leaders cannot accept their own failings and require scapegoats to shield them. The reason NHS ICU capacity was inundated in January was not because of the decision makers in government and NHS senior management, but because of the unshrouded granny killers who walk among us, of course. Our political rulers hope that the current bluster about ‘anti-vaxxers’ will create a fog in which their inadequacies are hidden.

One hopes that the people of Britain and France will not be so gullible as to allow their fellow citizens to be herded into steerage in this way. The eased consciences that the likes of Johnson and Macron seek are not due to them. One must acknowledge one’s own shortcomings first before redemption can be earned and this, they have no interest in doing.