The National:

WE’RE now months into this coronavirus crisis, and The Jouker has highlighted countless articles from the global media telling the truth about the UK Government’s response to the pandemic.

From Australia to Canada to the US, we’re told of how experts around the world have cast doubt on the UK for its slow testing, struggles with PPE and chiefly its delay in getting into lockdown.

Now we want to highlight a story from today’s Irish Times, headlined: “’They’re in a panic’: Unease grows in UK Government over handling of Covid-19”.

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Not something you’re likely to read on the BBC News website’s front page any time soon.

The story, by the newspaper’s London editor Denis Staunton, paints a grim picture of how the Tories are handling the crisis.

Our neighbour Ireland of course, closed schools and cancelled mass gatherings while large-scale concerts and events were allowed to continue in the UK. The country’s death rate is about a third that of the UK’s – though of course comparisons can only go so far, as the population densities differ somewhat between the two states.

The Irish Times article begins by stating there’s a “growing unease” in the Tory Party and the Government itself about its handling of the pandemic – and reminds readers that a slide showing international comparisons of death rates from Covid-19 was removed from the Downing Street press conference this week, as the UK death toll grew to the second largest in the world.

Ministers said that was because international comparisons are not helpful because there is not yet full clarity about total excess deaths – but Staunton points out despite that “the Government’s performance during the crisis has compared unfavourably with that of most of its European neighbours”.

The story features a damning quote from Allyson Pollock, a consultant in public health medicine and director of the centre for excellence in regulatory science at Newcastle University. “They’re in a panic because they’re making it up as they go along,” she said.

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Later in the story, Staunton turns his attention to care homes, where 40% of all UK coronavirus deaths are thought to have taken place. But on March 12 official guidance said there was little risk there “The Government hasn’t done its part, which is it hasn’t actually protected the very vulnerable whose lives they were meant to be saving, and that’s people who are older, in nursing homes and social care,” Pollock tells him.

Meanwhile political commentator Steve Richards argued to Staunton that Johnson is uniquely unsuitable for dealing with such a crisis.

“Here was a figure elected by his party because of Brexit, winning an election because of Brexit, choosing a cabinet because of their views on Brexit, choosing a chief adviser in Dominic Cummings to preside over a kind of shallow but angrily espoused domestic revolution – reforming the BBC, the civil service and all the rest of it – suddenly faced with something that he hadn’t by definition thought about, prepared for, planned for. And just objectively, whatever you think about him on other fronts, he has been wholly unprepared for this,” he told the newspaper.

The full story covers the lack of community tracing, failures in care homes, economic issues and more. Richards is given the last word, telling Staunton: “I think it’s quite hard to see how this becomes a good news story for the Government.”

The full story is available to read on the Irish Times website and is well worth doing so if you want insight into how other nations are viewing the UK’s handling of the crisis.