This corona crisis is replete with ironies. None more so than British Prime Minister Boris Johnson boasting about ignoring his own social-distancing guidelines only to end up in the ICU a few days later – infected with COVID-19.
Johnson expressed his gratitude to the staff of the National Health Service for saving his life when his treatment for the coronavirus could have ‘gone either way’ as the U.K. on Sunday became the fourth European country to surpass 10,000 virus-related deaths.
The prime minister said the nurses he identified as Jenny from Invercargill on New Zealand’s South Island and Luis from Portugal, near Porto, were the reason that ‘in the end, my body did start to get enough oxygen.’
(The Associated Press, April 12, 2020)
No doubt we are all glad he survived. But surely the irony of ironies is this Brexit standard-bearer citing foreign nurses for saving his life.
After all, he was thanking a nurse not from France or Germany but from Portugal, which ranks pretty close to the other side of the tracks among EU countries. Jean-Claude Juncker is the former president of the European Commission and, more to the point, Johnson’s notorious former nemesis. But even Juncker could not have scripted a more vindicating thank you.
Granted, Johnson may not have had a death-bed realization about the abiding merits of EU integration. But surely anyone who saw his video confession could not fail to notice Pauline visage of humility and grace.
Remainers can only hope that Johnson’s “conversion” will now move his government to enact more liberal policies, especially on immigration and the NHS.
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