Boris Johnson’s boomerang of blame has flown straight back and hit him square in the face

The moment the prime minister uttered the words ‘too many care homes didn’t really follow the procedures’, writes John Rentoul, his fate was sealed

Tuesday 07 July 2020 15:53 BST
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Boris Johnson received criticism for blaming care homes for coronavirus deaths after being asked about a large number of fatalities
Boris Johnson received criticism for blaming care homes for coronavirus deaths after being asked about a large number of fatalities

Imagine the naivety: the prime minister answered a question. Will he never learn? He was somewhere in the north of England – Goole, to be precise – with a hi-vis bib over his suit and a digger and some machinery in the background, to drive home the message that he was going to build, build, build his way out of the lockdown recession.

And a journalist asked him about the comments made by Simon Stevens, boss of NHS England, who had said that coronavirus had shone a “very harsh spotlight” on the “resilience” of the care system. Instead of saying, “I have no comment about that; I’m here to talk about making trains,” the prime minister said: “One of the things the crisis has shown is we need to think about how we organise our social care package better and how we make sure we look after people better who are in social care.”

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