Labour would have had no need to delay, they aren't invested in disaster capitalism or beholden to financiers and huge donors (i.e. the 0.1%). So they wouldn't have sat on their hands for eight weeks telling everyone it was overblown, dumb panic to be wary in order that their friends could realign their interests.
I don't pay attention to the news enough to have much of an idea, but were Labour genuinely demanding a lockdown, shutting borders (well significantly restricting) etc 8 weeks ago?
If so, fair enough I agree with you. If not, I find it hard to believe they would have anticipated the problem quickly enough to change things substantially had they been in power.
Corbyn isn't exactly the most dynamic or decisive of decision makers, or the first man you'd turn to in a crisis. Much like the current PM, he's a bumbling incompetent who is completely out of his depth as leader of the opposition let alone the country.
Johnson or Corbyn, it's not exactly an embarrassment of 'leader in a crisis' riches.
I reckon they would have told most employers to close down ealier and given everyone quick access to funds to replace lost wages. Ireland set up a 200 Euro weekly payment programme pretty quickly for people that would take 48 hours to process for those who couldn't work due to the shutdown. Denmark, Italy, France, Spain all had announced mortgage and bill freezes much earlier than the UK and I've no doubt Labour would have been all over that. This is important because we still can't get people to stay at home even now because they can't get paid and most people are one wage away from disaster.
When were Labour calling for a shutdown though? What was Corbyn's response to the idiotic 'herd immunity' strategy?
Maybe your point about payments is right, but that alone would be too little too late. My point was more about could they have prevented the situation from becoming a crisis, rather than would they be a little bit better at rearranging the chairs on the Titanic. I agree that I would trust them more to look after the financial well-being of the average household during the crisis though.
I also think we'd have been looking at an NHS that wasbetter prepared for what is coming. It isn't like we didn't know that medical proffessionals and other care and support workers need protective clothing and access to testing. It's hard to imagine a Labour party that ran on the promise of saving the NHS wouldn't have seen the obvious need to order facemasks, tests, and ventilators when they had almost two months warning.
Were Labour demanding the government do this 2 months ago? If they saw it coming they should have been pounding on the table and shouting from the rooftops.
If they were, I agree with you that they could have made a substantial difference. If not, there is nothing about the Labour leadership that inspires me to assume they would have become significantly more competent and decisive had they won the election. At best, marginally less incompetent, at worst marginally more so.
The current lot have been so totally inept that maybe the odds favour slightly less incompetent though.