My issue isn't that they have made mistakes. They have made major mistakes, of course, but at the outset their arguments for taking the position they were seemed coherent. There's been a level of incompetence (the Turkish PPE farce being the most recent) subsequently, but this is an unprecedented situation.
There's an underlying problem since 2010 that the NHS is chronically under-resourced for political ideology reasons, stripping it of any capacity to cope with even relatively modest upticks in demand (see 'winter crisis' reports year after year). But whilst some shysters like Gove were around then, the main components of this Govt weren't in positions of power.
No, my point is that they are using taxpayer money to lie and manipulate social media (using fake/bot accounts - indefensible IMO) in order to wage a propaganda war to cover up and deny their mistakes, errors & incompetence.
Such is the level of hold that SM seems to have with a large proportion of the electorate - especially when the falsehoods feed into the echo chamber of a person's prejudices, conspiracy theories and inaccurate opinions - that this prevents the government being properly held to account. As with Trump in the US, the government becomes able to 'get away with whatever they like', as a few carefully-crafted fake Tweets and FB posts appearing to come from impartial people (eg, fake NHS workers supporting Boris) will convince people desperate to be convinced that justified criticism the government is receiving isn't warranted.
Even at the most basic level, this is bad for democracy.
Originally Posted by: Saint Snow