CV19. What would the Labour party have done?

[ganganvince]

We will never know as the UK Labour Party has not given any indication of policy although the Welsh governing Labour Party which has devolved responsibility for health have fared no better than England.

 

[bluethrunthru]

I think we would have seen actions along similar lines. They would definitely have made mistakes aswell. I do think Starmer would have come across better in his public addresses and personal actions. Johnson has been poor at times especially with the Cummings farce. Sunack and Sharma have given the government a professional feeling, without these two things would have appeared worse regardless of how well they were doing a,s the rest have appeared pretty shambolic at times.

However had Labour won Starmer would not have been leader- Corbyn would still be in post. You don't win a UK election then change leader even if they are rubbish - see Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as living proof of that statement.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

In reality the tories have done the right things but with a couple of massive failings that undermined the whole response.

The lockdown was too late - could have been 2 weeks earlier - my work started to lockdown in Feb as we new it was coming.
The messaging from Boris has been poor throughout to the point its fallen apart - no one knows what the rules are now. The statistics have also been deliberately misleading - the whole thing seems more PR than substance.
PPE was badly botched (looks like some grift going on as well), the farcical flight of stuff from Turkey that turned out to be a scam?
Care homes were left to suffer as the government was too fixated on the NHS and they didn't get the testing and PPE up and running in time to help them.

 

[BlueHammer85]

Labour perhaps would focus more on protecting the NHS, health care workers and care homes rather than focus of the economic measures the Tories have taken - as mentioned, it is hypothetical and anyone in power nowadays would get absolutely pillared, the abuse Corbyn would be getting now if he was PM and done the same as Boris would be off the scale

 

[Churchlawtonblue]

However had Labour won Starmer would not have been leader- Corbyn would still be in post. You don't win a UK election then change leader even if they are rubbish - see Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as living proof of that statement.

Very true, I just never assumed Corbyn would get into power. Starmer might well do.

 

[Ban-jani]

Some different things here or there, mostly tweaks to approach but the end result wouldn’t have been too dissimilar.

Tens of thousands would have died, our civil liberties would have been affected in the long term, the economy trashed, care homes (which is the private company’s responsibility, I wish people would get this) would have been ravaged still.

No doubt Tories would have done what the left on here have done and blamed Labour voters for voting for them and failing to predict a global pandemic.

All in all a complete shit show as is our politics now.

 

[BobKowalski]

No idea. Don't really care.

 

[bluenova]

One thing we do know is that Labour were calling for a lockdown a couple of weeks before we did.

There's a case that even a week earlier would have halved the deaths: https://www.itv.com/news/2020-06-10...n-halved-if-uk-entered-lockdown-week-earlier/

Imagine if we had locked down two weeks earlier, when cases were much lower. The peak would have been a lot lower, the pressure on the NHS/Care homes a lot less. Even if we'd started easing lockdown after the same number of weeks, the cases would have been significantly lower, so track/trace would be a lot easier.

One of the saddest aspects has been the way that care homes were treated. Labour were calling for covid testing of patients sent to care homes from hospital in late March/early April. On April 2nd the government confirmed that testing wasn't required, and the advice didn't change till the 15th April. There were numerous complaints from senior hospital managers that they were under pressure to discharge as many old people as possible, but that some care homes wouldn't take them without testing. Incredibly, these care homes were the "bad guys" at the time. Boris, retrospectively putting the blame on he care homes is astonishing, but not unexpected.

Keir Starmer wouldn't have spent those two weeks shaking hands with as many ill people as he could find, and so wouldn't have spent weeks in hospital/recovering when the country needed leadership.

Starmer was also banging on about planning for reopening a lot earlier. He got criticised by Boris for this, but the point is that the planning should have started the day we locked down - and if we'd have done that earlier we'd have had more capacity for planning it.

There would also have been plenty of mistakes. A Corbyn led Labour would likely have been less decisive, but I suspect he'd be bypassed early on anyway. I'd hope Labour would have admitted to mistakes (as more other leaders - apart from the obvious - have), rather than telling us they didn't happen.

 

[Fame Monster]

I can't imagine it would have been any worse but I'm not sure it would have been much better either.

SAGE advised against closing the borders, stopping mass gatherings (because people would watch it in the pub ffs), and closing schools although some of that advice changed late-March when the bulk of the damage had been done.

I think when the advice to lockdown eventually came, I think Labour would have locked down a lot harder which would have saved lives but been more damaging to the economy.

I think we were fucked either way with Whitty, Valance, Van-Tam et al calling the shots.

 

[mat]

Why isn't this thread pulled for wumming?

A waste of bandwidth whataboutary.