1. Not sure about everyone else but I’m getting bored of all the blame gaming. On all sides (I’m culpable as well).

2. Whether it’s anonymous govt sources briefing against the experts or Matt Hancock. Or people asking the government to apologise.

3. This is not to say the govt has not made egregious mistakes. They have. But I think this is now sufficiently apparent (ie it’s old news) that it might be better to focus one’s critical energies on the what happens next.

4. Away from NHS capacity and infection dynamics (ie R), there are three critical conditions precedent to a material relaxation of the lockdown...

5.

A. A comprehensive testing regime

B. A fit for purpose contract tracing team

C. Sufficient and sustainable PPE

Without these, the lockdown isn’t going to end.

6. I’ve seen little evidence that any of this is anywhere near ready.

7. And that’s perhaps not surprising because each of these is a massive and massively complicated task.

8. It is past time that we had a single minister in government responsible SOLELY for these crucial aspects.

A Minister for the Virus.

(Or whatever you want to call it)

9. This is not a junior minister - an autonomous full cabinet minister, member of the quad (quint?), with a crystal clear mandate (testing, tracing, PPE) to be implemented in advance of the next phase of the lockdown.

10. The new minister does not need a big team but has untrammelled authority to use the resources and expertise of all the other departments.

11. FAOD this is a heavy weight role that requires a skill set not politics driven choice of candidate. Hunt would be an obvious choice but why not cast the net wider to some of those out of favour ministers from the previous government.

12. This is now the most important work in government. Shouldn’t we have someone solely in charge of it?

/ends