Good grief. The low expectations. I'll have a go at addressing them: I'd argue that it is the state of politics over the last 30 years that has directly caused us to have the current politicians that we have. Would BJ have ever been elected to lead the Conservative party back in the 70s or 80s? Like it not, the conservative party rivals to BJ simply do not have the common touch.
"Media pressure" to do anything you believe is wrong is a crap justification for any leader - or any human being with a moral compass, Absolutely. But few people have the strength of character to go against the grain. for that matter. The office of the PM also has the power to build its own media narrative if it has a compelling message and tries hard enough. Shaping the media narrative is a significant part of the PMs' job. Utter rubbish. Just look at how well that has turned out for creepy joe!
"Political pressure" to enact lockdown did not exist in a vacuum - many of his own backbenchers also exerted political pressure to not lockdown, particularly the second time around in late 2020. He chose to ignore this pressure, until it got so great he'd have lost his majority without Labour's support. The political "pressure" was not all running one way, which offered the PM more choice and leeway than you seem to suggest. I agree to an extent.
He also did not "have" to follow the scientific advice. Utter rubbish. He would have been absolutely slated if he had ignored scientific advice. Politicians are there to use their judgement and represent the interests of the public. Blindly following narrow advice to minimise the spread of one disease will obviously create collateral damage and the whole ******* point of an elected representative is that they should try to create policy which will reflect the totality of the public's interest, rather than the narrow interests of NHS trust leaders or scientists with dubious track records of modelling complex systems. No argument from me there.
"Just like every other country did" is both inaccurate and also crap leadership - worthy of a cliche often given from parents of giddy children along the lines of "if so and so jumped off a cliff would you also do it?"
It's also flat out wrong because the international response has ranged from Hermit Kingdom Zero-Covid (China, NZ, AUS) to **** It Who Cares (Brazil, some bits of USA, bits of Africa) and various stages in between (Sweden). And yet a lot of other countries had far more covid deaths than we did.
I believe that Boris handled Covid poorly and as he's the leader of the Government that I'm paying tax to, that is the judgement that matters most to me, not whether he did a better or worse job than Macron or Biden etc.
