Piers Morgan is right about the coronavirus crisis – and this is why you’re surprised

Framing Brexit as a culture war cast the Leave camp as patriotic and opponents as traitorous. Now the same script is applied to criticisms of government failures over the Covid-19 crisis – although not by one unexpected figure

Would never normally retweet Piers Morgan,” wrote Diane Abbott on Twitter yesterday. “But on the PPE issue he is 100 per cent correct.”

Sharing a post from the TV presenter, about NHS workers running out of personal protective equipment (PPE), the Labour MP for Hackney North joins the growing ranks of leftists who bewilderingly find themselves applauding Piers Morgan, of all people, during this pandemic.

Yes, him: the Good Morning Britain presenter known for his reactionary tirades, hectoring women, dismissing racism and (until recently) palling around with Donald Trump. These days, Morgan is praised for holding the government to account over its catastrophic handling of the coronavirus crisis. He’s gone from attacking feminists, progressives and Meghan Markle to saluting doctors, migrant workers and the German chancellor Angela Merkel.

Truly, we live unprecedented times.

It began in late March, when Morgan was one of few British journalists to pull apart the government’s reckless herd immunity strategy – an approach that could have led to a quarter of a million deaths.

He interviewed health secretary Matt Hancock, who insisted there had been no such strategy, so the presenter played a clip of the government’s chief scientific officer from a few weeks earlier, discussing the exact policy Hancock was denying had even existed. A freelance journalist who had been sounding alarms over herd immunity told me Morgan’s focus on the issue “felt like the cavalry coming over the hill”. Over blistering breakfast exchanges, the presenter has been putting questions about PPE shortages, coronavirus testing and a failure to protect the elderly to a succession of flailing ministers.

These sharp interviews are gaining approval because scrutiny is otherwise in short supply. The government’s socially distanced daily press conferences, with journalists putting questions over video, offer little more than political dissembling. Meanwhile media outlets such as Channel 4 are serially refused news interviews, while others appear willing to amplify government misdirection.

Criticism over a shortage of coronavirus tests was diverted with a pledge to deliver an even larger number of tests: 100,000 per day by the end of the month, an obfuscating target which will also not be met. Fury at the treatment of elderly people in care homes was mollified with badges for carers. And for a week while Boris Johnson was in hospital, the nightmare of Britain’s escalating coronavirus deaths appeared as a footnote on tabloid fronts.

In this climate, Morgan is giving voice to the moral outrage felt over the government’s disastrous handling of the coronavirus crisis, which has led to thousands of potentially avoidable deaths. Labour has positioned itself as broadly supportive and its MPs note how difficult it must be for government, none of which speaks to the mounting sense of public despair. It is not helped by parliament being mothballed in an ill-advised recess (it will sit virtually from next week).

Johnson’s favourable polling ­is likely dampening criticisms. And the government’s “led by the science” mantra has blindsided – though it also prompted a journalists collective to launch the Covid Report, a discussion between scientists generating over 50,000 views for its first online broadcast.

But Piers Morgan can speak out because his usual political positioning lets him deflect the silencing tricks of the populist right.

Appearing on Good Morning Britain last week, Hancock suggested the breakfast TV host was misjudging the public mood – to which Morgan said he “didn’t give a damn” about that. With the left long portrayed as elite and out of touch, a rightist invocation of authentic popular sentiment can all too often cow political opponents.

Indeed the interminable Brexit wars furnished this populist right-wing government with a narrative to copy and paste onto this pandemic. Framing Brexit as a culture war cast the Leave camp as patriotic and opponents as traitorous. Now the same script is applied to criticisms of government failures over the Covid-19 crisis, slammed as “politicising the crisis” or lacking in loyalty. Misplaced use of war rhetoric replete with a “Blitz spirit” has built a defensive shield not around the country, but around the government.

Now a Sunday Times investigation threatens to blow it up, with damning details of government failure to prepare for the pandemic, for which the nation is paying with one of the highest death tolls in the world. Reaching for reliable tools, the prime minister’s cheerleaders in the press are assuring that he will soon be well enough to take charge again.

But the trouble is that the shocking mismanagement happened on his watch. And Piers Morgan, for one, is not buying it.