“FOR those who like to talk Britain down, the vaccination figures are shocking.
“Twenty million first doses administered. A forward- thinking procurement plan.
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“The leading large nation, far ahead of the US and, more gallingly for frothing Remoaners, miles ahead of Europe.”
Well, I would say that, wouldn’t I? Except I didn’t. These are the words of Ed Cumming, one of the Left-leaning Guardian stable’s leading columnists.
It is a refreshingly fair and vanishingly rare appraisal of just how well this ghastly Boris-led Tory government is doing, despite . . . well, despite everything. Despite Brexit, despite Covid, despite Boris himself.
“Nothing could be more depressing for the honest self-loathing liberal Brit,” writes Ed in the Observer.
Unprompted gems like this from the Guardian/BBC axis are scarce as hen’s teeth. They deserve a wider audience. With commendable honesty, Ed admits revelling in whatever bad news he has been able to unearth since Britain voted Leave.
So it was galling to see Boris doing rather well for a buffoon, riding high in the polls against floundering Labour leader Keir Starmer and winning applause from “our friends” across the Channel.
How infuriating as more than 30 per cent of UK voters become Covid-immune while Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron risk EU lives by snubbing our brilliant Oxford jab.
Our economy is doing OK, too. Even with the £280BILLION millstone of extra Covid support, global investors are queuing to gamble hard cash on British success.
“We can’t say we haven’t had a good run,” says rueful Ed. “The past few years have been wonderful. Any positive stories could be written off as a fluke or a statistical aberration.
“There has been abundant bad news to confirm what we already knew: Britain is a sad, grey little plague island in the Atlantic, heading full tilt towards irrelevance. Brexit has been Gloomster Glastonbury.”
His self-flagellation is a joy to behold: “The early days of the pandemic were promising, too. We had the dithering over lockdown, the PPE fiasco and the Barnard Castle drive-by.
A simple eye-roll was usually enough to convey your membership of the ‘I Told You So’ club. What do you expect from ten years of Tory rule?”
He even cites the EU-loving Economist and Boris-hating Private Eye’s gritted-teeth applause for both our triumph on carbon-free emissions and Covid vaccine breakthrough.
He repeats last week’s fabulous Bild newspaper splash, “Brits, we envy you”, and wonders if our Oxford jab has pierced European unity, perhaps fatally.
“The bitterest pill is that we’re beating Germany, the nation self-loathing Brits revere more than any other,” wails Ed.
“Germany, which welcomes every immigrant, has sensible governments, and has only ever craved peaceful European integration. Surely the pandemic can’t have exposed shortcomings in having a pan-continental uber-bureaucracy?”
There is more. Annoyingly, Britain’s economy is doing too well. Ed quotes American economist Tyler Cowen describing Britain as “grossly under-rated”.
Our recovery is further advanced even than Germany’s, says Cowen.
Rishi Sunak will go further in Wednesday’s Budget, unleashing the Bank of England’s “coiled spring” of growth as investors splurge billions in this “sad, grey little plague island”.
Yes, I admit I am revelling in all this breast-beating — as will millions of Sun readers. But I am also genuinely impressed.
Ed Cumming’s comments may be self-mocking but he deserves credit for finally stating a truth most of his fellow Remainers would rather die than utter.
If this new reality spreads to the BBC and other members of the “I Told You So” club” — unlikely, I agree — it might even begin healing decades of bitterness which have split families and fractured friendships.
The EU began as a good idea, a community of trading nations. Now it has self- destructed as a political and economic gamble gone shockingly bad. It has taken Brexit and Covid to expose the flaws in the grandiose dream of ever-closer union.
The Observer deserves applause for giving Ed space for fair and honest journalism.
