Beautiful Virgin Islands

Friday, Oct 31, 2025

While Boris Johnson partied, I helped a child put on PPE to see his dying dad

While Boris Johnson partied, I helped a child put on PPE to see his dying dad

NHS doctors were grateful to the public who followed Covid rules. The PM’s glass of wine has been thrown in all our faces, says palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke
Nine in the room, if you include the photographer. Eight glasses held high, a table strewn with bottles. Not a mask to be seen, not a hint of social distancing. They’re standing mere breaths apart. And there, holding court, centre stage – all grins and clownish mop of hair and crumpled, easy swagger – is Boris, good old Boris. Knees up, guard down, clearly raising a toast in a room full of alcohol. It all looks so very jolly.

Only at a second glance do you notice the red box that sits askew upon a chair, slung there like an afterthought. Then, in the foreground, a further revelation. As if designed to mock, tucked away between the bottles is that icon of the Covid age – a plastic pump dispenser of hand sanitiser. And how absurd it looks, how silly, this token nod towards curtailing infection amid the booze and grins and genial dissolution of another night of No 10 flicking the finger to the nation.

They were partying, to be clear, on the day Britain’s Covid death toll topped 52,800. Another 438 deaths added to the tally just hours before the revelry started. With the country yet again in lockdown, Covid felt old, so grim, and so much harder this time round. Still, you gritted your teeth and did what you must. Because, honestly, who in their right mind would want to risk infecting and killing others? The swaggerer-in-chief, that’s who, Downing Street’s serial carouser. His smugness, the nod and the wink of it all. Come on chaps, there’s rules and there’s “rules”.

Boris Johnson and his hangers-on are desperate to convince you the rules never mattered – and that anyway, you’re down there in the cesspit with him. For wasn’t it all, by this stage, just so tiresome? And weren’t all of us at it, this clandestine cavorting? Well. From a frontline perspective, in late 2020, when this picture was taken, the second wave was crashing down and the dying was just getting started. As Boris raised his glass and chortled, more than 60,000 of us still lived, still breathed, who, three months later, would be dead.

To NHS staff, it was always abundantly clear that the way you survive a pandemic is together. Collective compliance – this fragile, miraculous web of forbearance from an increasingly battered nation of stoics – was really all our patients had. Over and over, I would thank my stars for basic, selfless, public decency. Because by January 2021, the ventilators, ambulances and beds were running out again. People were dying who should have lived – in their beds at home before a paramedic could reach them, on hospital forecourts, on tarmac, in corridors, on ordinary wards because the ICU was full.

What we had to enforce at this time could feel barbaric. Once, at Christmas, I begged the powers that be to permit – please – a teenage boy to accompany his mother into the room where his father lay dying of Covid. The rules were so rigid – one deathbed visitor only – but finally, under duress, they relented. And so I sat, masked and gowned, in a tiny room with pastel wall art and obligatory NHS tissues, trying to prepare a boy the same age as my son for how very different his dad would look now to the man who’d been whisked away from his home by ambulance.

When you’ve helped children into PPE, pretending you can’t see as their lips start to quiver, you feel a boundless gratitude to the rule-respecting public. You know too well that what prevents a vertiginous death toll from rising ever higher is their millions of acts of individual sacrifice, from the mundane to the utterly harrowing. Rules, in short, have been the necessary curse of this pandemic. Hated yet obeyed, because we care about each other. We knew it at the time, we know it’s true today. And that glass of wine in the prime minister’s hand? It’s been thrown into the faces of us all.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
UK and Vietnam Sign Landmark Migration Deal to Fast-Track Returns of Irregular Arrivals
UK Drug-Pricing Overhaul Essential for Life-Sciences Ambition, Says GSK Chief
Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie Temporarily Leave the UK Amid Their Parents’ Royal Fallout
UK Weighs Early End to Oil and Gas Windfall Tax as Reeves Seeks Investment Commitments
UK Retail Inflation Slows as Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since Spring
Next Raises Full-Year Profit Guidance After Strong Third-Quarter Performance
Reform UK’s Lee Anderson Admits to 'Gaming' Benefits System While Advocating Crackdown
United States and South Korea Conclude Major Trade Accord Worth $350 Billion
Hurricane Melissa Strikes Cuba After Devastating Jamaica With Record Winds
Vice President Vance to Headline Turning Point USA Campus Event at Ole Miss
U.S. Targets Maritime Narco-Routes While Border Pressure to Mexico Remains Limited
Bill Gates at 70: “I Have a Real Fear of Artificial Intelligence – and Also Regret”
Elon Musk Unveils Grokipedia: An AI-Driven Alternative to Wikipedia
Saudi Arabia Unveils Vision for First-Ever "Sky Stadium" Suspended Over Desert Floor
Amazon Announces 14 000 Corporate Job Cuts as AI Investment Accelerates
UK Shop Prices Fall for First Time Since March, Food Leads the Decline
London Stock Exchange Group ADR (LNSTY) Earns Zacks Rank #1 Upgrade on Rising Earnings Outlook
Soap legend Tony Adams, long-time star of Crossroads, dies at 84
Rachel Reeves Signals Tax Increases Ahead of November Budget Amid £20-50 Billion Fiscal Gap
NatWest Past Gains of 314% Spotlight Opportunity — But Some Key Risks Remain
UK Launches ‘Golden Age’ of Nuclear with £38 Billion Sizewell C Approval
UK Announces £1.08 Billion Budget for Offshore Wind Auction to Boost 2030 Capacity
UK Seeks Steel Alliance with EU and US to Counter China’s Over-Capacity
UK Struggles to Balance China as Both Strategic Threat and Valued Trading Partner
Argentina’s Markets Surge as Milei’s Party Secures Major Win
British Journalist Sami Hamdi Detained by U.S. Authorities After Visa Revocation Amid Israel-Gaza Commentary
King Charles Unveils UK’s First LGBT+ Armed Forces Memorial at National Memorial Arboretum
At ninety-two and re-elected: Paul Biya secures eighth term in Cameroon amid unrest
Racist Incidents Against UK Nurses Surge by 55%
UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves Cites Shared Concerns With Trump Administration as Foundation for Early US-UK Trade Deal
Essentra plc: A Closer Look at a UK ‘Penny Stock’ Opportunity Amid Market Weakness
U.S. and China Near Deal to Avert Rare-Earth Export Controls Ahead of Trump-Xi Summit
Justin time: Justin Herbert Shields Madison Beer with Impressive Reflex at Lakers Game
Russia’s President Putin Declares Burevestnik Nuclear Cruise Missile Ready for Deployment
Giuffre’s Memoir Alleges Maxwell Claimed Sexual Act with Clooney
House Republicans Move to Strip NYC Mayoral Front-Runner Zohran Mamdani of U.S. Citizenship
Record-High Spoiled Ballots Signal Voter Discontent in Ireland’s 2025 Presidential Election
Philippines’ Taal Volcano Erupts Overnight with 2.4 km Ash Plume
Albania’s Virtual AI 'Minister' Diella Set to 'Birth' Eighty-Three Digital Assistants for MPs
Tesla Unveils Vision for Optimus V3 as ‘Biggest Product of All Time’, Including Surgical Capabilities
Francis Ford Coppola Auctions Luxury Watches After Self-Financed Film Flop
Convicted Sex Offender Mistakenly Freed by UK Prison Service Arrested in London
United States and China Begin Constructive Trade Negotiations Ahead of Trump–Xi Summit
U.S. Treasury Sanctions Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro over Drug-Trafficking Allegations
Miss USA Crowns Nebraska’s Audrey Eckert Amid Leadership Overhaul
‘I Am Not Done’: Kamala Harris Signals Possible 2028 White House Run
NBA Faces Integrity Crisis After Mass Arrests in Gambling Scandal
Swift Heist at the Louvre Sees Eight French Crown Jewels Stolen in Under Seven Minutes
U.S. Halts Trade Talks with Canada After Ontario Ad Using Reagan Voice Triggers Diplomatic Fallout
Microsoft AI CEO: ‘We’re making an AI that you can trust your kids to use’ — but can Microsoft rebuild its own trust before fixing the industry’s?
×