World beaters in the coronavirus death stakes

These are exciting times.

Three nations are competing hotly for position in the Coronavirus stakes. Italy, where I was born, led all three in deaths per million of the population for a while, but Spain, where I now live, overtook it, while Britain, and I am a loyal subject of Her Most Gracious Britannic Majesty – well, relatively loyal – was always lying third.

Top places in Europe for Coronavirus deaths per million

But a week ago, Britain caught up with Italy, and since has moved ahead. And now it’s closing fast on Spain: just 18 deaths per million behind today. First place in Europe is within reach. But, of course, the UK has an unfair advantage: it’s led by mini-Trump, Boris Johnson.

With a Trump, a Johnson or a Bolsonaro in charge, a nation is a guaranteed world-beater in the Coronavirus death stakes.

These leaders are special. 

Bolsonaro, Johnson, Trump
Swamp dwellers competing in the virus death stakes

Bolsonaro’s devil-may-care attitude towards the virus has even earned him the title ‘Killer’. He’s got his nation into second position behind Trump in infections and is moving strongly up the deaths-per-million field.

Trump is, of course, exceptional. His outstanding skill in invective is only rivalled by his capacity for non-delivery. He promised a wall between the US and Mexico, but apart from a few short stretches, it’s just not happening. It’s hard to choose between relief at the failure of a lousy idea, or scorn at his failure to honour his pledge.

Twitter has now started issuing a few warnings about whether Trump’s Tweets can really be entirely relied on for accuracy. He’s turned livid against the social media giant. He wants the law changed to prevent this kind of uppity behaviour. To him, saying what you like – correction, what he likes – is freedom of expression, but pointing out that it’s false is treacherous bias.

Interestingly, mini-Trump in England has many of the same traits.

For instance, he too has a remarkable track record of failures. As Mayor of London, there was his Garden bridge across the Thames, now cancelled at great cost to the taxpayer. There was also his ingenious plan for new buses, now terminated, because they too were excessively expensive. Then there were the three water cannon bought second hand from Germany, eventually sold unused for scrap.

His behaviour in the pandemic has been the same. He plucks commitments out of the air – so many tests per day by such-and-such a date, achieved only on the deadline, for one day, with fiddled stats; now there’s the track, trace and isolate system to be in place by 1 June, which few experts believe will happen.

But he’s going ahead with further relaxation of the lockdown, even though case numbers are still growing at far too high a rate.

Like Trump, he’s sure his entitled group has an inherent right to be treated differently from the rest of us. It’s an attitude he’s had since childhood, as a letter home from his school housemaster makes clear: “I think he honestly believes that it is churlish of us not to regard him as an exception, one who should be free of the network of obligation which binds everyone else.”

This has led to the ongoing scandal concerning his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, who broke the very lockdown rules he was instrumental in drawing up.

Cummings and his wife drove their child 260 miles up the country when she was ill with Coronavirus and he was likely to be carrying it, as was later confirmed to be the case. Their explanation is that with both of them potentially ill, they were worried about childcare for their son and wanted to get him to where Cummings’ parents lived.

But plenty of others have faced similar childcare problems and suffered the difficulty of dealing with them, without breaking the lockdown rules.

Let’s be clear how he broke those rules: they might have infected any number of people on the way. They might have infected their son. And when they got there, they might have infected his parents, who as older people were in a high-risk group.

It’s no surprise that many MPs, including Conservatives, have been deluged with furious letters from voters demanding that Cummings be fired.

Instead, Johnson and several of his Ministers defend his actions as the behaviour of a loving parent. So is a parent facing childcare problems who doesn’t break the rule insufficiently loving of his child?

Indeed, isn’t anyone who follows the rules, just a mug? After all, it’s clear the rules were made to be broken.

Sadly, what not everyone realises, is that they’re only made to be broken by the Johnson coterie. Dominic Cummings, yes; the rest of us, no. So Johnson and his government have closed ranks around Cummings. Why? Is this great loyalty from Johnson? One of his fellow Conservative MPs had a different explanation for the Guardian: “This is a cabinet of fools led by a hollow narcissist who is nothing without his Svengali.”

Yep. We’ve seen Johnson’s track record of ideas as Mayor of London. He’s not good at coming up with any that work, is he? Cummings was key in winning the Brexit referendum for the Leave side. And his brilliantly simple slogan, ‘Get Brexit Done’, took Johnson to a landslide victory over a Labour leader who could only waffle on the Brexit issue.

Remember Trump claiming he wanted to ‘drain the swamp’? It strikes me the swamp has never been so murky as since he took office in Washington. As in Brasilia with Bolsonaro. Or in Westminster with Johnson.

Perhaps it really is time to drain the swamp. But starting with the man who dreamed up the slogan, Trump, and his disciples, led by Johnson and Bolsonaro. After all, given the way the US, Brazil and the UK are performing in the Coronavirus mortality stakes, it’s a matter of life and death.

And I’m using that hackneyed expression literally.