Simply because it is the Prime Minister, we have to address the words. I use the Guardian’s account. The prime minister expressed optimism the UK was “making progress in this incredible national battle against coronavirus”. Aside his optimism when he has just recovered, it is not “incredible”, but actual, not “national” but international and not a “battle”, because we are fighting no-one. It is coronavirus and “progress” is containing the virus; it is not progress engendered by the Government. It is a discipline being practised round the world by those who can. There is the rhetoric, but it is not real.

He said the country was mourning “every day those who are taken from us in such numbers, and the struggle is by no means over” but he argued progress was being made “because the British public formed a human shield around this country’s greatest national asset – our NHS”. Yes, we are mourning, and obviously the struggle is by no means over. Who is saying that it is, when hundreds die each day? But what of the human shield? Of course, it is another false war analogy. The NHS is fighting no-one, and we are not putting ourselves between the arrows and the protected NHS. We are not heroes. We are making heavy demands of the NHS staff against a background of real cuts for a decade under the label of Tory austerity leaving them short of resources. Is the NHS our greatest “asset”? Notice the business word. There is a deal planned with the United States to allow greater US market access to its provisions. UK private companies have increasingly participated in it on the basis of profit and the private-public finance initiatives under Major and Brown have and will cost the cost the NHS some £80bn overall and 2% of the annual NHS Budget. So increasingly the NHS has been forced to operating for profit, not love. The rhetoric is empty.

Johnson said he had seen the pressures the NHS was under after seven days in hospital, including three in intensive care. And he had witnessed the “personal courage not just of the doctors and nurses but of everyone: the cleaners, the cooks, the healthcare workers of every description, physios, radiographers, pharmacists”.  Of course, more than a quarter of all doctors and 16% of nurses are immigrants, not exactly welcomed by the Tories. The Conservative Manifesto under pressure from Labour for the failings of the past, promised 50,000 new nurses in this Parliament, from where? 30,000 NHS workers are on zero hours contracts. This is hardly a deeply affirmed workforce, until now, when they save Johnson’s life.

He goes on. “That is how I also know that across this country, 24 hours a day, for every second of every hour, there are hundreds of thousands of NHS staff who are acting with the same care and thought and precision as Jenny and Luis,” he said. “That is why we will defeat this coronavirus and defeat it together. We will win because our NHS is the beating heart of this country. It is the best of this country. It is unconquerable. It is powered by love.” Ignore, every second of every hour. No. It is not “winning”. It is caring for the sick and dying. It is powered by love, ordinary neighbour love, the Second Great Commandment. It is an extension of Jesus’s parable of the Good Samaritan, where need comes before profit. But love has not been funded. But the Conservative Cabinet includes those who are paid £1000 an hour while others are paid £10 an hour, and the Government is run by those who love money. So, the rhetoric is there, but, at present it has nothing in it.

It may be a genuine change of heart, Christian repentance. If so, it will require an apology to Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party. It will include the recognition of failings in the early months of the Pandemic. It will recognize that we are nothing special. It will involved a recognition of the needs of all, not just Prime Ministers, in addressing sickness, poverty, homelessness and refugees. It will involve a radically different kind of politics for all, the politics of love and not money, a total re-ordering of the Conservative Party since Thatcher. Johnson was recently given over three quarters of a million pounds by his friends, according to the Register of Members interests. His friendship network has now widened.