The British Prime Minister has been moved into the ICU:
Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care after his coronavirus condition worsened, Downing Street announced tonight. He is conscious and has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputise for him. Mr Johnson, 55, has been transferred to intensive care as a precaution should he require a ventilator.
Not to be pessimistic here, but it is generally not a good sign when one’s consciousness is deemed newsworthy. The more conspiratorial-minded will, I imagine, be tempted to view this as some sort of revenge for Brexit.
UPDATE: Can’t say I’m liking Boris’s odds particularly well based on recent developments concerning his possible successors. Although I can’t imagine the British electorate is particularly impressed by the new Labour Party leader’s top priority in light of the current crisis.
- Dominic Raab is now the UK’s de facto prime minister after Boris Johnson was hospitalised, with the running of the country placed in the hands of a man who has just one year of Cabinet experience…. Mr Raab said karate helped him cope with the premature death of his father, Peter, who had fled to the UK from Czechoslovakia at the age of six in 1938 to escape the Nazis. The Foreign Secretary released pictures during his Tory leadership campaign of his Jewish relatives who were murdered in the Holocaust.
- New Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has apologised to the Jewish community for anti-Semitism in the party and promised to “tear out this poison by its roots”…. Sir Keir, a QC and former Director of Public Prosecutions, had a surprise for the 750-strong audience. Quizzed on whether he considered himself to be a Zionist — a supporter of the existence of the state of Israel — he answered: “I don’t know how many people know this (but) my wife’s family are Jewish and we have got extended family in Israel.”