Labour, Mount says, left the NHS in reasonable shape, not perfect by any means but ‘still meeting people’s basic needs at a cost far below that of comparable health systems in Europe, let alone the US.’ Then in 2012 came the disastrous Lansley reforms, cutting money and trying to centralise everything. ‘The resulting confusion has been made evident at the daily press conferences given during the epidemic. Exactly what do these panjandrums flanking the pygmy minister of the day do… and which of them does what? We don’t know and it’s not always clear that they know either.’ He traces this back to Thatcher’s capping of the domestic rates in 1984 (which he confesses to have had ‘a small but culpable hand in’) and the abolition of the GLC and the Metropolitan Counties in 1986 ‘ ‘What we have now,’ he concludes this part of his essay, ‘is a public health service that is simultaneously starved, fragmented and centralised.’ The result can be seen in, among other things, the Care Homes débacle during the pandemic.

But even this does not quite explain how it is that the British Government, ‘with all the expertise available to it, should have proved so spectacularly cack-handed.’ ‘Some leaders end up in their bunker,’ he goes on. ‘Trump has recently paid a trial visit to his. Johnson has been in one from the start.’ The disaster to the economy and Britain’s standing in the world that will ensue from the Brexit he is doggedly pursuing, he points out, ‘will be the result of a freely chosen policy. We were not driven to the cliff edge by accident or incompetence… It was always the Brexiteers’ destination of choice. It’s a chilly place.’ Those infected with the Covid-19 virus across the world have now passed 10 million.

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