What could have a different party done differently??

[iOnlyWearBlack]

Just that really? Fb and twitter is full of how badly the Tories have handled this but what could say, Labour, have done differently?? Ok, they could have put us in to lock down earlier? But how could they have got more PPE in to hospitals / carers? *This isn't a for / against the Tories post, I'm just genuinely curious...
I don't feel we have the police numbers to be able to control the lock down. I work in retail and people are just shopping as normal imo...

I think most people would argue that labour would have supported the NHS prior to this, so better wages, etc. I don't think this would really help people leave the profession, we still have a massive shortage of nurses and I don't think chucking a few more quid will make people flock to the profession. Neither party can force people to work in the profession, I think it takes a specific kind of person to be a nurse or dr and I don't think it's always wage related (although it does help!)

In terms of actual cv I don't think labour would have done much different, just like the torris can't magic 10,000 ventilators out of thin air, labour wouldn't have managed it either. Same goes for PPE, I don't think it's tories not WANTiNG to provide it, it's a case of getting your hands on stuff. Companies won't normally have thousands of spare stock lying around, it's made based on need, and they would have kept production at the level people need, ramping production up takes time.

Lockdown wise I don't know if labour would have acted quicker?, possibly not. Would this have made a difference to death rates? Probably not. Sadly people are going to die and their isn't much the Labour Party could have done to prevent it. If we had gone into lock down too early would we have seen a sharp rise in cases once lock down has ended?

I think the tories have done remarkably well in a completely unprecedented situation. One I sincerely hope we never have to pay encounter again. You are always going to find people will loose out. Lots of self employed people saying that they don't get anything because of X Y Z,as harsh as it sounds the government are trying. They are spending billions? To keep people with a roof over their heads. But hey, I'm sure some armchair critic will be along shortly to tell us all how it should have been done properly.

Maybe labour would’ve used the few weeks/months warning we had to put in orders for tests, PPE, ventilators etc. So we wouldn’t have been the last to order and therefore in short supply. But who knows. It’s impossible to tell who would’ve done better/worse. The 10 previous years of tory austerity haven’t left us in a great position to fight this though.

In general terms, I think one of the big differences between the two parties is that Labour prioritises people and the Conservatives prioritise the economy. So I think Labour would have introduced social distancing sooner (which I think would have made a difference to the eventual size of our peak) and perhaps would have done more to support people financially through lockdown. But that would have put us in an even worse recession/depression than we're already headed for.

I think the other issues (PPE, etc) would have been the same no matter who was in power.

I like to think that labour values human life, so would not have gone with a crazy 'herd immunity and let the vulnerable die' approach for those first valuable weeks.

Yes - hopefully they'd have ensured the NHS was better equipped prior, too.

I suppose Labour might have gone into lockdown a bit earlier. They might have been happy to cancel some large events - Cheltenham and Crufts maybe, but might have been less happy to cancel football.

I guess all countries will be going over what could have been done differently. The Italian Premier says he would have done nothing differently BBC as regards the timing of their lockdown and Macron is clear there were issues in dealing with the pandemic in France The Guardian. Much reflection to come from all governments I suspect.

I'm not sure that Labour would have locked down or social distanced sooner when Jeremy Corbyn refused to self isolate when that was the advice for his age group and I'm not taking the idea that a party so riddled with anti semitism and a leader so supportive of terrorism organisations values human life any more than the tories

They could have closed our borders, introduced lockdown earlier, introduced enforced quarantine and airport checks for any UK nationals returning, focused on contact tracing and testing, ordered PPE and testing kits earlier, encouraged UK medical suppliers to prioritise the UK market, asked UK companies to make ventilators earlier, fasttracked the patents for ventilating equipment and PPE that medical researchers have developed, closed schools earlier ...
I don't know which party would have done it. Feasibly Corbyn would have wanted to prioritise the health of the nation and realised that acting faster would have benefited the economy because it would ultimately have meant shorter lockdown. But as the leaked report has shown certain sections of labour would have been too busy trying to sabotage him to care about the impact.

Who knows. No point comparing the Tory government with a hypothetical Corbyn-led government. More useful to compare it with other actual governments- like Germany’s. They’re clearly doing something right when you look at their stats compared to ours. They had the same information available to them as to what was happening in China and then in Italy ... although granted - they do actually properly fund their health system - 4% of GDP compared with 2% here.

twitter.com/Flakmagnet1/status/1249751482968219649?s=19

This just wouldn't have happened

I don't know that governments knew what would be the right approach until they were actually implementing their measures. If you've got it wrong, it's too late to change tack because the virus is spreading so fast. Germany, I think, went for testing, tracking and isolation, which seems to have been successful, and hopefully they are past the worst for them. But just 3 weeks ago, they had the same questions as everywhere else about their capacity to cope. www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-big-wave-of-corona-cases-will-hit-german-hospitals-in-10-to-14-days-a-45cd754c-e179-4dbb-8caf-8f6074e641cf

Nothing. It would’ve been exactly the same.

More to do with what they would have done before I think. The NHS for a start wouldn't be in the state it is in, it would have been properly funded and we wouldn't have list thousands of overseas workers.

Also, school haven't been properly funded in a decade, ever since Tony Blair. Had that been the case remote learning would be easier as staff would have more access to resources. Similarity, the welfare of this country under the Tories has been abysmal, the poor are left to it, UC, Bedroom tax etc.

Then you have the following of the poorly thought out herd immunity plan and late lockdown etc. Look at England in comparison to Ireland and N Ireland. Schools closed almost a week earlier and look at how that has affected the curve.

The Tories wasted January and February not taking CV-19 seriously, Johnson went on hols and the talk was herd immunity, they allowed people in from N.Italy with no testing or follow up.
Horse racing and footie was allowed to continue and ban on bars allowed a last hurrah!!!

This was the time to be ordering that extra PPE not in March, the much vaunted UK designed ventilators have not been approved for use and we have had 60 sent in from Germany instead.

The lack of planning for care homes is little more than criminal negligence.

Because we acted late and weren't prepared, the economic cost will be greater, as we'll be in lockdown for longer.

Its pointless arguing what Labour may or may not have done, we'll never know but we can all see the failings of the Conservatives.

Also, the government sat on their hands for two months with our oaf of a PM bragging about shaking hands with CV-19 patients and his bigger oaf of a father stating on TV he was going to flout the regulations and keep going to pubs.

It's all academic anyway, and I say this as a Labour voter, because Labour are in no position to lead the country.
The government are doing the best job they can in the circumstances. I'm sick of all these armchair critics with their hindsight.... I also think Labour politicians should be WORKING WITH THE GOVERNMENT AND ACTUALLY DOING SOMETHING POSITIVE AND ACTIVE that actually helps, instead of carping on TV about the government from their second home study.
The country would not have accepted lockdown earlier. People hadn't grasped the severity of the virus. Preppers were mocked and people were going round saying No-one tells me what to do... Even those who conform now were bridling against the interference with their social lives.

Test trace and isolate like all the competent governments have done!!!!! Look at South Korea, Singapore, Germany, New Zealand. They don’t have 1000 people dying a day. Chinese scientists published a paper in the Lancet back in January on how to deal with this pandemic. We ignored it because clearly British stiff upper lip will see us through. 31 healthcare workers dead too. It’s not good enough

Not fuck about wasting the first two months mainly. January 23rd was the absolute latest point to have begun serious preparations.

The government are still following herd immunity just in waves, as there aren’t enough fit healthy people to catch it and create herd immunity , it means the old and vulnerable have to die just not too quickly because that looks worse. We are heading for the worst outbreak in Europe

The country would not have accepted lockdown earlier. People hadn't grasped the severity of the virus

I don't believe this, the Govt played down the severity of CV-19, we were told the NHS is well prepared, we have a developed a test, that the vast majority will have a very mild version and that "we can take it on the chin"
Had Johnson treated the virus more seriously, the country would have followed as the mood would have been different.

Labour can work with the tories but the govt need to make that offer, I wish the Govt would invite several opposition MPs into decision making.

Locked down sooner
Valued foreign NHS workers (no wait, valued the NHS entirely)
Filled NHS vacancies
Paid attention to outcome of Exercise Cygnus
Not spent four years indulging in Brexit/wasting millions of pounds.

The main thing the government did wrong was not increasing the testing much sooner. By the time they realised and promised to ramp it up, every country was trying to do it, and lol and behold we can't get the chemicals we need to make enough tests. Germany have handled it so much better. But whether labour would have managed it better, we just don't know, so it's a bit pointless speculating.

Avoid the Brexit fiasco
Not asset strip the NHS
Respond to Cygnus report
Engage with EU procurement from start
Not fund Dyson to not produce useful ventilators
Maintain adequate capacity in NHS hospitals
Value EU and other immigrant staff
Plan ahead and understand resourcing earlier
Prioritise life over making the wealthy wealthier
Not tell lies
Set good example about isolation, lockdown and distancing
Set up cross party working

Bit of a pointless argument BUT the NHS would have been adequately funded so better able to deal with a crisis. Not refused to purchase PPE or ventilators based on petty excuses (EU deals and FlaxMarket), value human life more than the economy. You can't deny this government ignored advice and acted far too late. Businesses losing money because of weeks of unenforced 'stay home' advice while not officially closing pubs etc.

*FlakMagnet

Not sure it’s necessarily the case that Labour (and in particular Corbyn-led labour) would have led better during this crisis, but if we hadn’t had a decade of conservative power going into this we would have had a better resourced NHS initially, and warning reports about preparedness for a pandemic might have been heeded rather than buried. But, these are the things that should have happened in this pandemic:

Taking the situation seriously the moment it left China
Shutting down international travel earlier
Heeding WHO advice about testing, and not having a situation where we are still not testing other than hospital admissions and have no idea what’s going on
Stopping mass gatherings earlier
I actually support social distancing as a concept and think if we had stopped all recreational activity sooner we might have either had a lower peak or continued to keep core business and school going longer
Not ignoring invitations to join EU procurement schemes for PPE and medical equipment
Not ignoring our strong manufacturing industry in favour of Dyson et al and their empty promises

Boris is/was basically Trump-lite in the run up to this