Critics jeered at the Prime Minister when he promised a “world-beating” test trace system, mocked him for taking on the extortionate cost of “operation moonshot” by providing mass free lateral flow tests, and roundly rejected his vaccine rollout plan. But in just a few days England will return to life pretty much as it was before the pandemic.
Speaking in the House of Commons this afternoon, Mr Johnson said all remaining legal restrictions would be removed on Thursday.
“We have a population that is protected by the biggest vaccination programme in our history,” he hailed.
“We have the antivirals, the treatments, and the scientific understanding of this virus, and we have the capabilities to respond rapidly to any resurgence or new variant.”
After a rocky start to its handling of the pandemic, with claims he put Britain on the back foot by dithering and delaying on imposing lockdowns, it is Mr Johnson who will be the first to claim victory over the pandemic.
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While Boris-bashers have lamented the Prime Minister’s efforts, countries around the world have relied on the leadership shown by London.
It was thanks to investment by the UK Government that the Oxford-AstraZeneca was developed, offering cheap injections across the globe.
While EU nations scaremongered about the jab, its manufacture is playing a key role in giving vaccines to people around the world.
It was Britain too that took the courageous decision to extend the gap between first and second jabs while the Alpha variant quickly spread.
Mr Johnson’s sign off on extending the gap from four weeks to 12 weeks allowed the UK to give a first dose to a far larger proportion of the population, curbing the spread of the virus.
Where the UK led, the rest of the world followed, implementing the same strategy in the weeks after.
And the repeated emergence of new variants which risked undermining progress made during the pandemic were only discovered thanks to British science.
The UK has undertaken more genomic sequencing than any other country, carefully examining Covid cases to investigate mutations in the virus.
Findings from the sequencing have helped shape not just how the UK responds to coronavirus but the entire world.
Germany’s virologist-in-chief, Christian Drosten, admitted Britain’s leading role last month, saying: “At some point, we have to say a big ‘thank you’ to Denmark, England and Israel, for allowing us to base our entire pandemic policy on their data.”
Mr Johnson has been keen to prove that Brexit Britain is a global force, playing a key role in global affairs.
The pandemic is proof to all the naysayers that the UK remains a world leader.
