WHEN you come under pressure in politics there are essentially two ways out of the crisis. You abandon what you were doing and go over to your critics, or you tough it out and stick to your beliefs.

To no-one’s great surprise Boris Johnson has chosen the coward’s way out and adopted the main agenda of Tory critics on his right. As scientists have warned, this risks a resurgence of the number of omicron cases in this country. This is while new deaths are still on the rise.

Many great crimes have been committed in high office. But this is an extraordinary case of a Prime Minister who is willing to let people die in even greater numbers simply to save his own skin. Greater self-love has no man than to lay down the lives of others to save himself.

He has abandoned Plan B measures entirely, which were only introduced belatedly and in a half-hearted fashion, which is this government’s custom in the pandemic. Removing them prematurely is also entirely in line with their business-first approach.

We should be clear that these are lethal anti-worker, pro-business measures. They follow intense lobbying by major businesses and Tory donors for an end to all measures.

This clamour is based on the foolish notion that it is the mildest of restrictions that are damaging the hospitality sector, for example. Instead, as both polling and actual behaviour indicates, a majority of people do not want to go to shops, hang out in pubs or restaurants or go to the cinema during a deadly pandemic. We can be confident that the very same lobbyists will soon be back, asking for bailouts when their customers fail to show up as the pandemic rages.

So, the main political question is not whether Johnson will be ousted as Prime Minister. He has already shown that he has adopted the main policies of any his likely successors.

It would be delusional to suggest that any replacement will deliver a less reactionary, less bleak perspective. Instead, there is unlikely to be any let-up in the enormous series of attacks that this government has launched and which are primarily directed against lower-paid workers, disabled people and black and Asian communities.

Whoever Johnson’s successor is from within the Tory Party it will be someone who has fully supported all those attacks and would possibly go even further. This is because a combination of the swivel-eyed ideologues of the European Research Group (ERG), Covid Research Group (CRG) and others have been increasingly allowed to set the political agenda and are now effectively politically in charge of the Tory Party.

They have been abetted in this by the most toxic Tory part of the press and other media. The turning point came at the end of last year, when Johnson had to rely on Labour votes to get any measures through the Commons. A majority of the parliamentary Tory Party has gone over to the ERG and CRG factions.

This was quickly followed by a Cabinet meeting in name only, which became a discussion group as Johnson was too cowardly to put forward any measures for fear of handing one of his rivals his own job. So, Johnson has switched from supporting ineffective and largely ornamental measures against the virus to tearing them all down. It is now even proposed that the infected should not self-isolate all.

There is an outside possibility that Johnson does cling on. But this will only be by pandering to the worst elements of his own party. They are being thrown “red meat.” As a result the bodies will continue to pile higher, in their disgusting phrase.

All the Tory MPs have supported Johnson’s policies to date. They do not object to his partying. They knew what he was like. His crime is to push them down from a 12-point lead in 2019 to a 10-point deficit now.

All the Tory MPs supported every single attack, including the massive loss of life, NHS on its knees, renewed austerity and whipping up racism. They also supported trampling on democratic rights and removal, the attacks on women and the siege of the NHS.

It is important to state that there has not been a murmur of disapproval from any of the possible candidates to succeed the worst Prime Minister in living memory. This is necessary because, if Johnson is ousted, the very same press will discover that his successor is principled, sober and thoughtful. Just as they have done for the rapid succession of Tory leaders in recent years.

It will also be argued that Covid deaths are a natural event and that the government is doing its best. The truth is numerous countries that have a population size similar to our own have a tiny fraction of our death toll. This includes countries as poor as Kenya and as highly developed as South Korea. The only thing approaching world-beating under this government is the death toll.

Allowing disabled or elderly people to die in huge number shows the callousness of this government and its supporters. Allowing lower-paid workers and black and Asian people to die in hugely disproportionate numbers demonstrates its political character. So, at various points in the pandemic the government insisted that state schools remain open while public schools were allowed to close.

This is an attack on our people, a conscious policy which is connected to the rest of the government’s reactionary agenda. In the upheaval and chaos caused by the government response to the pandemic, they have seen the opportunity to pursue long-held Tory objectives on rolling back the NHS, driving down wages, increasing job insecurity, creating a more authoritarian state and adopting deportation policies which would have pleased Enoch Powell.

There should be an understanding that the consequences of the pandemic as well as the government’s viciously reactionary agenda are two sides of the same coin. An attack on behalf of the business interests this government represents on the very people the wider labour movement was formed to defend.

Our people cannot live with the virus. They are dying from it because it is lethal. And they have far fewer social protections. Proposals for mitigations like more ventilation, or much better sick pay are welcome, but inadequate. On their own, the outcome will be more of the same.

Instead, we could be one of the many countries actively suppressing the virus, just as we suppressed other deadly diseases. The alternative is to hand over the fate of people’s lives and livelihoods, as well as the NHS, to this Tory Party.

Diane Abbott is MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington.