The country seems happy to rally behind the flag – but we mustn’t forget the mistakes Johnson has made

I wish the prime minister a speedy recovery, but he must still be held to account, writes Matthew Norman

The prime minister has faced scrutiny over some of his decisions (PA)

The list of potential symptoms of novel coronavirus, or Covid-19, is on the rise, with the loss of smell and taste, stomach upsets and others added to the fever and persistent cough.

But could yet another early sign of virus be the newly acquired ability to see Michael Gove on telly without nausea? Before similarly affected viewers of the Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 think about calling the emergency services, the answer is no.

A more credible explanation lies in the well worn trope that in times of national emergency, the instinct is to trust those in power.

Even if her name be Ratched, you cling to nurse for fear of something worse. We accept that while these people are doing their best under pulverising stress, there is no flawless navigation through violent and unchartered waters.

But for how long will this indulgence of failure, as if the government were an adorable four-year-old forgetting her nativity play lines, persist? For now, leadership ratings are stratospheric everywhere. In the US, Donald Trump’s handling of the crisis, abysmal as it has been and unimaginably callous as it threatens to become, is approved by more than half of Americans.

There, as here, cognitive dissonance is at work. Many more disbelieve almost everything he tells them than believe it. But the reflex to rally behind the flag, and the craving to trust that those in charge know what they’re doing, paralyses the critical faculties. For a while.

In Britain, likewise, the polling finds that about two-thirds approve of Boris Johnson’s performance. Being prey to the same instincts as most, I admit that highlighting the gulf between reality and perception, especially while he himself is unwell, feels a bit cheap.

But enough with the piety, and on to the fact. Nothing Johnson oversees and enacts in the weeks ahead, once he recovers as we hope he swiftly will, should divert every ounce of attention from the errors of the weeks behind.

We will never be able to quantify precisely how many were affected as he blithely squandered the lessons from northern Italy during and after that flirtation with herd immunity. But the projection he sent the public by boasting about shaking hands with everyone he met in a hospital dealing with victims will, along with other staggering blunders, while only add to that number.

Add to this his disinclination to test on a scale anywhere near the German model, and the enduring failure to protect frontline NHS staff.

All right, you can’t entirely help feeling, even if Johnson screwed up, he screwed up in good faith – and in the absence of contrary evidence (and that may come in time), on the advice of globally respected medical experts.

But what if we believe it was bad faith due to ideological intransigence? What if people have died, are dying, and will die because some were too blinded by the infantile mirage of a boldly independent Britain to accept lifesaving help from the EU?

Questioned about the missed deadline to join an EU scheme to provide ventilators, Gove told Marr today that this was down to “communication confusion”.

OK, it’s a splendid excuse. After all, which of us hasn’t received an emailed communication from Brussels offering free ventilators, and confused it with the promotional offer of 50 free spins from an online casino? Then again, it does directly contradict Johnson, who via his official spokesperson stated last week that the government ignored the ventilator procurement scheme because the UK is no longer a member of the EU.

If this version is correct, let’s leave a second or two for the implication to sink in… Meanwhile, this same government is reportedly considering importing EU nationals to harvest fruit and veg before it perishes unpicked. If so, that would blatantly prioritise the survival of asparagus and blackberries over the survival of human beings.

In a country with so little effective oversight of its rulers, it’s unlikely that any of the post mortems into the government’s handling of this disaster will unearth the full truth.

Yet Gove inadvertently dropped a useful clue. He told Marr he was assured “by senior figures in the NHS that there is nothing that we can’t do as an independent nation that being part of that scheme would have allowed us to do”.

With one trivial exception to that “nothing” – having more ventilators – that may be the case. But note Gove’s crude neurolinguistic messaging with the phrase “independent nation”.

A much larger clue about the explanation will come retroactively when Johnson decides whether to postpone EU withdrawal beyond the end of the year.

If he sticks by his promise not to delay it, thereby actively inducing more and wholly avoidable financial and supply shockwaves in the midst of this unparalleled economic earthquake, then the situation around the ventilators becomes harder to put in the box marked “communication confusion”.

Few would deny there are ideologies worth the sacrifice of human life. But if Johnson ever mistook a hard Brexit for one of them, it is worth remembering some emergency legislation has already been pushed through, and it can happen again.