The people who saved Boris Johnson’s life still have to pay £624 if they want anyone to save their own

The question going into prime minister’s questions was: given that large numbers of Boris Johnson’s new policies on coronavirus have the unfortunate side effect of confirming previous policies accidentally caused large numbers of entirely unnecessary deaths, would the prime minister do not just the right thing but the smart thing and acknowledge that mistakes had been made?

For example, now that a massive testing and tracing program (which doesn’t quite exist yet but let’s not be fussy) has been introduced, was it wrong to suspend the initial one? Or, was it wrong to dispatch untested but asymptomatic patients from hospitals to care homes, where they have almost certainly brought on a terrible wave of death, now that it is known that the asymptomatic phase of coronavirus is likely to be the most infectious?

It is not immediately clear why this was the question, because it intimates a certain amount of doubt about the nature of Johnson’s relationship with the truth, when no doubt exists.

In the last few days, pictures have circulated of innovative new social distancing measures being trialled abroad, including from a German town in which restaurant diners are wearing tri-cornered hats with long brightly coloured styrofoam fingers, like a kind of soft-play go-go-Gadget copter.

It cannot be ruled out that our own prime minister has secretly been wearing such a contraption all his adult life, as a clandestine trellis on which to train his hair, of which the hidden purpose has always been to keep him suitably socially distanced from the truth at all times, not to mention any especially feisty family lawyers.

It has also been pointed out that on the previous two occasions, Johnson has been almost ritualistically humiliated by Keir Starmer. But that is a philosophical question more than anything else. Can a person be humiliated if they do not feel the humiliation themselves? It is possible to shame someone who exists beneath the realm of shame?

Regardless of the answer, what had been near-universally agreed is that the prime minister wouldn’t be stupid enough to arrive as ill-prepared on the two previous occasions, and risk looking quite so ridiculous again. He hadn’t done any more actual preparation on this occasion, of course not, but he had been working on a new tactic, which was to deliberately not answer the question, and then when asked it again, angrily point out that he had already answered it.

This kind of thing:

Why isn’t your program of testing care home workers beginning until 2 June?

“We have tested 125,000 people in care homes.”

Your own chief executive of Care Home England said the program isn’t beginning until 2 June. Is he wrong?

“Perhaps the right honourable gentleman wasn’t listening. We have already tested 125,000 people in care homes.”

Not an answer in any way, but, you know, jab your finger hard enough and it’ll do.

It has also been said, many times, that Starmer, once the nation’s chief prosecutor, is well suited to the eerily silent, socially distanced House of Commons, which feels rather more like a court room than a debating chamber.

Perhaps he is well suited – but it’s not without its downside. In a court room, if a witness or a defendant, deliberately evades the question then claims to have answered it, the judge tends to intervene and tell them they must answer the question. Not so in the Commons, where you’re free to dissemble as much as you like, and few people have ever liked to do so quite as much as Johnson.

The question of the NHS surcharge for immigrants was a classic example of an artfully truth-avoiding formulation of which we will see countless amounts in the coming years.

It is fair to say there is something of a growing unease in the country about the hitherto under-realised fact that immigrant NHS workers who are busy risking their own lives to save the rest of ours have to pay a surcharge of £400 a year, rising to £624 in October, to actually use the services they provide. Starmer pointed out that a care worker would have to spend 70 hours, paid at minimum wage, caring for coronavirus patients, just to be able to afford the supposedly free care they need should they have the misfortune to contract the virus, as hundreds if not thousands of them have done.

It somehow doesn’t feel quite right that we clap for care workers on a Thursday night then slap them with a bill.

“We must look at the reality,” Mr Johnson said. “It’s a national service, and those contributions actually raise about £900m, and it’s very difficult in the current circumstances to find alternative sources.”

That new arrivals in the UK should not be entitled to free healthcare is an emotive point but it is not altogether controversial. Few, if any countries anywhere provide such a thing. But that is not the question. All that is being requested is what in any other line of work would be a perk, a staff discount. Johnson, if given the chance, still likes to claim he is going to build “40 new hospitals,” even if the real number is closer to six. In such circumstances, it simply cannot be sustained that a £400 bill to immigrant care workers can be overlooked.

Still, even to have asked about it was apparently unacceptable. At one point, Starmer was accused of being “slightly negative”.

You have to admire the chutzpah. Now, pointing out the prime minister’s stunning failures turns you into what he likes to call one of “the doomsters, the gloomsters”. It was hilarious enough when applied merely to the economic hara-kiri of Brexit, delivered with the Samurai sword of Johnson’s lies.

Now, it turns out, opposition politicians are being too “negative” about the large numbers of deaths for which he bears ultimate responsibility. Unfortunately, in both cases, it is too late to wish away the pain with some phoney optimism. The damage has been done.

Grievous mistakes have consequences that can’t just be wished away, and we will all be stuck with our one for many years to come.