The latest COVID-19 announcement by Boris Johnson which he made at 8pm last night seemed to be in a very clear change from his approach at 9am on the day before. Despite this change the positive aspects of his announcement were all strongly supported by Keir Starmer who chose not to get into conflict when he was interviewed a few minutes later on TV. It was certainly clear based on the interview 12 hours later on Radio 4 that Michael Gove had not been fully informed or was not on the same page as his colleague and so this suggests that our Government does not have enough internal capacity to deal with these challenging positions at present. All of these decision makers and communicators clearly need our support as well as that which is coming from people like Keir Starmer and other party leaders. In order to improve the prospects of the Government to help rectify matters for our nation it would seem to make sense for them to work in a positive way with the leaders from other parties and clearly with the leaders of the health and education and other public sector agencies. The tweets above these images indicate how a criticism by one MP was withdrawn and how the Minister claimed that working together is vital. This took place a few days earlier over who was getting the vaccines. It is clearly important for people like Nadhim Zahawi to follow through on their claims now as their personal reputation is much less important than the clear communication with our nation. Of course the coalition in World War II did not depend on such fast responses and the coalition 10 years ago was not dealing with any sort of crisis compared to currently or indeed World War II. Perhaps the approach by New Zealand is the best approach for Boris and Keir to pay attention to.

Clearly this is the third national lockdown and given that Johnson reversed the last one on the 2nd of December and then we went through a myriad of changes and then a month later we have ended up back in lockdown, we definitely need a coherent approach for all parts of the nation. There are a significant number of people who are feeling very unconfident in these constant changes although all of us would find this sort of issue extremely difficult to deal with ourselves. There does need to be some strong communication over the next 12 weeks and beyond. All of us need to be clear regarding what is appropriate and how the timescale will change as positive or negative elements emerge.