COVID has exposed a fault line in British society, centred around the level of responsibility people believe government should take for the welfare of the people of this country, and the value of life...

The answer should be clear in any democracy, but of course the waters are muddied by those who have their own parachutes, don’t consider themselves at risk, and ideologues

And successive governments, have failed to treat healthcare as a strategic asset, and to invest accordingly. This is a failure of leadership and imagination, but also an explicit decision, a miscalculated risk.

But then there will always be events beyond the ability of a country to manage without severe loss of life, though probably COVID shouldn’t be one…

And it’s actually our fault.

We are cheap voters. We elect politicians who underfund everything, from health, justice, policing, environment, building standards, and education - all false economies

Why do we do this? The glibness of political discourse? The crass perversion of libertarianism into anarcho-capitalism? Ignorance? Conceit and complacency born of the fact there is an NHS, and a welfare state? Laziness?

And for all the Libertarian traditions of Britain, anarcho-capitalism is an American aberration. And it is in conflict with the infinitely more fruitful tradition of empiricism which has evolved into the scientific method that underpins the “modern world”

In fact despite some false starts the Tory government has supported people to a much greater degree than might have been predicted, even if the primary motivation of this isn’t clear…

But Johnson’s greatest folly remains alive: Brexit, both an aberration and its raison d’être. And this really is an anarcho-capitalist extravaganza, and the repudiation of empiricism and rationalism. And it’s an insanity to land this on the country in just 2 months.

Johnson has been late to every decision, most recently probably because of opposition from his own mediocre MPs, rather than his own talent for prevarication.

But let’s hope he isn’t too late now and isn’t too late to the decision to defer the effects of Brexit…