One of the more concerning possible outcomes of the corona crisis is that this government may actually emerge with its reputation enhanced.

This would be an entirely unmerited result. Taking things in the round its handling of the crisis has been lamentable.

For years a pandemic has been top of the Government’s risk register. Academic research together with recent experience of SARS, MERS, Ebola and HIV meant we knew how to prepare for and deal with such an inevitable event.

So we knew how to control an epidemic in terms of managing opportunities for, transmission of, and susceptibility to the infection.

We knew we would have to test and trace; we knew intensive care with ventilation would probably be required; we knew PPI would have to be stockpiled; we knew it was highly likely those in care-homes would be among the most vulnerable.

And yet rather than prepare for a disaster that we knew would come someday, this government of blinkered ideologues chose to fritter away time, energy and treasure on preparing for a no-deal Brexit - an entirely man-made, avoidable disaster.

Does anybody seriously think that if it wasn’t for their blind adherence to the madness of Brexit that the likes of Sunak, Raab and Patel would occupy great offices of state, or that Johnson would be PM?

It is particularly sickening to hear Michael Gove singing Johnson’s praises - someone whose competence he doubted so much only four years ago that he was prepared to put a political knife in Johnson’s back.

Gove - who previously showed complete contempt for experts then advising of the stupidity of Brexit, now hiding behind and showing Uriah Heep-style deference to experts in a most nauseating way.

And yet all the signs are that this assembly are determined to show the heights of their arrogance, and strength of their immunisation against the facts, by seeking to fulfil their cherished fantasy of Brexit, come what may.

So they refuse to abandon the possibility of a no-deal outcome to the current trade talks with the EU.

Like Hitler in his concrete bunker letting Germany be destroyed around him, Johnson and his gang are prepared to sit in their ideological bunker and watch British society, already seriously weakened by their lack of preparedness for the corona crisis, crash onto the rocks of a no-trade-deal Brexit.

One can only hope that one outcome of this crisis may be a general election, which will give us the opportunity to consign this bunch to the political oblivion they so richly deserve.

Ronald McGrath

Langley Way, Watford