Boris Johnson, we can’t beat this pandemic with fist-clenching. What the people need is clarity – and fast

The prime minister made it very clear that before we can all do the conga down the street, we will have a world-beating testing regime. If only saying that made it true

A week ago, I chatted with all of my brothers through a screen, something we do more now than we ever did before. In fact, for the 16 years my eldest brother has lived in France, we have never once spoken to each other on the phone. Now, I speak to him thrice weekly.

My sister in law, in her delightful broken English, explained to us that the French lockdown would begin to be lifted on 11 May. She was due to go back to work the following week and my twin nephews were to begin going back to school. She told me about how the local, regional and national government were each providing all citizens with masks to be worn in public. We teased her about how much as a French person she was going to enjoy filling in the hundred forms to each level of bureaucracy. I guess a government spending weeks discussing with its citizens and planning with local, regional and national government how lockdown would end is bound to raise a titter from our sarcastic British souls, you often laugh at things you can’t understand. How funny they are with all their forms and planning. We are more the crash bang wallop, no detail, no planning, no communication, just keep buggering on and hope for the best kinda folk. Oh, how we laughed.

This morning, following the prime minister's pre-recorded, no time for questions address to the nation, I have no idea what the plans are for most of my constituents' lives. Already, hundreds of emails have flooded into my inbox asking if people can go back to cleaning in other people’s homes, if they can start having their half-finished kitchen refurbished, if there is any plan for the shielded group of people or if they can now visit their elderly parents.

People’s lives are more complicated than a simple infographic can explain, a simple category of person is not a thing. So as I understand it today, builders can go to work, whereas primary teachers will go to work in June. But what if you are a builder with a child who is not in school? Does that mean you don’t have to work until June as long as your child is under 11? What if you are a teacher with cancer, or a teacher who lives with someone with cancer? What guidance should you take then?

I can already hear the hawkish libertarian scolding my words and suggesting that I am babying the British public who will be able to make these decisions for themselves. I find that people who don’t desire answers to the complex questions of people’s lives often don’t have complex lives themselves and would pretty much be alright no matter what the government decides.

My constituents, alas, are not in the category that live outside of government influence. Many of them have died. If anything is true in this crisis it’s that not all people are equal. Poorer people, BAME people, key workers, they live where I live. We need planning, details and questions answered, not so I can win a political point against Boris Johnson but so they can stay alive and thrive.

But don’t worry, the prime minister made it very clear that before we can all do the conga down the street, we will have handled the situation in care homes and have a world-beating testing regime. If only saying that made it true. I spent VE Day delivering volunteer-sewn scrubs and other PPE to care homes in Birmingham. Not provided by any layer of bureaucracy but by gorgeous volunteers at Birmingham Scrub Hub who have spent their time learning the safety standards and sewing in their own homes.

While chatting with staff at one care home, I was told about our so-called "world-beating" testing regime. Thirty swabs were sent to the care home to test all the residents with the instruction that they had to be done by 7am and the tests collected within a week, or they would be invalid. These vital key workers, who we all clap for each week, got all the residents up at 6:30am to do the tests, disrupting everyone's schedules but dutifully doing it for the safety of the home and the nation. No one ever came to pick them up, so they went in the bin. No one got tested. And all I was left to comfort them with was volunteer sewn work clothes. World-beating testing indeed.

Details and planning matter more than good speeches and fists banging on tables. People’s lives matter more than people’s reputations. I am not a dove who is scared of my shadow, I am an MP who, faced with a million questions I cannot answer, has had to buy condolence cards in bulk. With no forms to fill in for my government-provided PPE, all that's left is a slogan: stay alert. Don’t worry, I am.