Apart from a bright spark of hope in the victory of the Gaza motion, this year’s conference lacked vision and purpose — we need to urgently reconnect Labour with its roots rather than weakly aping the flag-waving right, argues KIM JOHNSON MP

“WE’RE seeing cases rise fairly rapidly – and there could be 50,000 cases detected per day by the 19th [July] and again as we predicted, we’re seeing rising hospital admissions,” Boris Johnson explained at a Downing Street press conference on July 5. “We must reconcile ourselves sadly to more deaths from Covid.”
Frustratingly, as epidemiologist Dr Deepti Gurdasani told the Morning Star last month, “what is happening now was entirely predictable and predicted.” And incredibly, despite the rising number of hospital admissions endangering the NHS’s recovery, over one million people living with Long Covid and an increasing risk of a new variant resistant to vaccines, on July 5 the Prime Minister announced plans to fully open on July 19.
In short, UK government policy is to let the virus “rip” in the UK.
How did we end up in this mess?

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