It seems the pathologically oversized ego got the better of him. Leaving by the front door, cardboard box in hand, is self-evidently the work of a poseur and narcissist. Well, he got his page one headlines and I’m doing him the perverse service of reproducing the moment below. But the image is too delicious to pass over.

Good. Good riddance.

Career psychopath

I rarely agree with former PM David Cameron. But it was he who first coined the term “career psychopath” for the man-with-a-box shown above. The abbreviation “CP” seems to lend too much of an air of “cool” to such a repellent, twisted creature. So I’ll use the name “Seepy” from here on. It seems quite appropriate: the malign poison he exudes seems to have seeped out all over the body politic of this country. And it rhymes with creepy.

From education, to Vote Leave, mismanagement of the Covid pandemic, the needless deaths and job losses shown plainly that, whilst he may have been an effective campaigner and a “breaker and shaker”, when it comes to actually governing a country, his presence has been pure poison.

Henchman at Education

I personally first became aware of Seepy ten years ago, when he was Gove’s henchman at Education. His wild ideas clearly struck a chord with the former Murdoch hack Gove. The changes introduced in these years have wreaked havoc with our education system: I estimate it will take twenty years to recover once reversal of these policies has started (which, of course, it hasn’t yet). The fragmentation and disruption to schools in particular has produced not one scrap of evidence that improvement to outcomes has resulted. And the marketisation of university life has led to some perverse results. As a result of high student fees and hence competition for students, we have a generation with high student debts. Because of Covid, we have extra students crammed into accommodation, virtually as prisoners as the virus swept through our campuses in late September and October.

I distinctly remember a conversation I had about seven years ago with a former Local Education Authority Chief Education officer. She lamented the “responsibility without power” dilemma created by Gove’s newly-introduced dogma-driven policy. Since the Gove changes, Local Education Authorities are forbidden from opening new LA-run schools. But they retain statutory responsibility to ensure all children in their area have a school place. So, where demand exceeded supply, she had to persuade, cajole and beg unaccountable Academy Trusts to expand or build new schools to meet the need. This was, and is, clearly a more difficult and stressful job than when Local Authorities controlled all the “levers”. It’s not at all clear to me how this loss of control benefits children’s education.

How much of this was the brainchild of Seepy personally, I just don’t know. But it’s easy to imagine his enthusiastic campaigning for this piece of market-inspired dogma.

Vote Leave: Lies and Misuse of Data

 Much has been written already about the lies told by the Vote Leave campaign, from the £350m for the NHS through to the 20 million Turks about to “invade” Britain once Turkey joined the EU. This latter was presented almost as an established fact: the truth was that under Erdogan, Turkey was moving further and further away from meeting the EU’s exacting criteria for membership.

And, of course, Vote Leave was fined £61,000 by the Electoral Commission for breaking spending limits with some very dodgy shifting around of funds. Unfortunately for true justice, the level of penalties available to the Electoral Commission were based upon General Elections, where each malpractice potentially only affects one of 630 constituencies. The referendum result, self-evidently, affected the whole United Kingdom.

And it was Seepy who headed the Vote Leave operation and should carry the can for its misdeeds.

Number Ten: Reign of Terror

The scope for misdeeds continued on a nationally significant scale when Seepy was put in charge of running Johnson’s Downing Street operation when the latter became Prime Minister. All the departmental special advisers, in a break from the previous norm, were told they had a dual responsibility: now reporting to Seepy himself as well as their own Minister. One outfall from this was the resignation of Savid Jared as Chancellor who saw this as a diminution of the power of the treasury.

Another fallout from this change was the incident in August 2019 when Sonia Khan, former Spad to Jared, was frogmarched from Number Ten on Seepy’s orders. Khan made allegations of his aggression and bullying behaviour. She has now reached an out-of-court settlement “for a five-figure sum” in lieu of an employment tribunal hearing due next month to hear her claim for unfair dismissal. Seepy was named as a respondent in the case; Cabinet Office lawyers tried – unsuccessfully – to get his name removed, presumably so that the full story of Seepy’s behaviour was not presented in open court.

And Then Came Covid

Johnson is notorious, from both during and before his time as Mayor of London, for being lazy and not on top of the detail of running his office. So it was no surprise that his Number Ten Cabinet Office as proved to be dysfunctional and incapable of governing the country. The pressures of managing the pandemic have made this problem a lot worse, and the results: worst death rate in Europe, biggest hit to the economy, are in plain view. It’s a matter of open record that Johnson has been over-dependent, to an unhealthy degree, on his chief adviser. It must remain a matter of speculation how much of this dysfunction is a result of the chaos and infighting which Seepy has encouraged by his behaviour.

The Ballad of Barnard Castle

I think few now doubt that the poor adherence to Government guidance in the pandemic by sections of the public is due in part to the famous rules-busting trip to Durham and Barnard Castle. Certainly senior police officers quote the incident being used as justification for rule-breaking when their officers apprehend members of the public. It follows, as night follows day, that people have died – and continue to die – as a result of this one incident. Worse, Johnson’s attempt to defend the actions of his henchman has undermined the whole moral authority of the UK government.

EU and US Trade Deals

There are now fewer than 50 days until the UK is scheduled to finish the transition period and “fully” leave the EU. The government, businesses and those responsible for new border IT systems are woefully unprepared. How can companies (including logistic firms) prepare for something, the details of which are still to be negotiated?

Leaving the EU was the raison d’être of the Johnson government and of Seepy’s appointment to a leading role. Some damage limitation could be achieved by negotiating a trade deal with the EU in the extremely limited time left. Johnson and his sidekick seem more emotionally attached to a deal with the US, with food poisoning, threats to UK farmers’ livelihoods, NHS creeping takeover by US private health companies as clear threats. Their dreams were based on their soulmate across the water, one Donald Trump.

But there’s just one problem with these dreams. Trump lost. And Joe Biden, his successor-to-be takes a different view. Firstly, he is proud of his Irish roots and very strongly opposed to anything which might affect the Good Friday Agreement. Meanwhile, Trump, the Arch Bunker of populism, is in denial, skulking in the Twituation Room in the White House.

The received view was that Seepy was keen on No Deal with the EU. Johnson is, presumably a tabula rasa in this respect: he is, after all, the journalist who wrote two versions, Remain and Leave, of his article for the Daily Telegraph at the start of the referendum campaign. So, with Seepy gone, the betting shifts towards a last-minute deal. Johnson will dress this up as a great feat of negotiating: just one more lie, like “oven ready” was last autumn.

Good News

There were, of course, two items of good news in the past week. The announcement of an effective vaccine was one; the departure of the man at the centre of this blog post was the other. The Covid vaccine needs to be stored and transported at -70 degrees. Let’s hope the lorries carrying them don’t get stuck on their way from Belgium (where the vaccine will be made). Meantime, stay safe and stick to the rules! (Even if some don’t!)

His influence has left lasting damage, first in education, then the economy (through leaving the EU single market) and then health (through dysfunction and chaos at the heart of government and the loss of government authority from Barnard Castle).

I’m very glad he’s gone. But the damage he’s done will be with us for some time to come.

…or, to spell it out, the Cummings-Johnson Junta.

Sliding Into Fascism

Back in the heady pre-EU referendum days of early 2016, I wrote a blog post which I entitled Sliding Into Fascism. Reading it again now, I was struck by how much has changed since then. The issues and concerns about which I wrote seem to have taken place so long ago. Some of the names are the same as now, but all in different jobs. I made reference to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan – remember her? – and her predecessor Michael Gove, then at the Ministry of Justice. George “austerity” Osborne was, of course, Chancellor of the Exchequer and, in a comment in reply to the post, even a junior minister in the Cabinet Office, “Matthew” Hancock, gets a mention.

Some of the themes in the post still ring familiar. The Education Secretary was making threatening-sounding statements to the teaching unions. Opaquely-funded so-called “think tanks” were allowed to continue their right-wing propaganda and fake news whilst charities’ freedoms to speak out were being curtailed. The House of Lords was being stuffed full of extra cronies of the Prime Minister.

Other measures reported in the post seemed all to point in one direction: namely, changes designed, bit by bit, to consolidate the Tories’ stranglehold on the electorate to perpetuate a de facto one-party rule. Since the, matters have taken a turn for a whole lot worse.

Under a Bus

The fact that the vast majority of the press are Tory supporters, often advocating policies and actions even more extreme that the government itself, doesn’t seem enough for the CJJ. Cummings’ power grab for political advisers effectively reporting to his command and the widespread sacking of senior civil servants is all part of the so-called “hard rain” falling on the Civil Service. Mark Sedwill from the Cabinet Office, Jonathan Slater from Education, Sally Collier from Ofqual are just three senior heads to roll in recent days. Veteran journalist John Humphreys weighs into the debate in an article for YouGov here. (His article also served as a reminder of a resignation early in 2020 following bullying by Home Secretary Priti Patel.)

The head of the FDA (the senior civil servants’ “trade union”) put it this way: “This administration will throw civil service leaders under a bus without a moment’s hesitation to shield ministers from any kind of accountability”. History shows that power without accountability always leads to greater and greater abuse of that power.

Taking the Central Line

The United Kingdom as a state has always been centralised compared with many of its counterparts. The freedom given to the government of the day by our unwritten “constitution” fails to provide the checks and balances which act as a safeguard elsewhere. But the centralisation of power into Westminster has proceeded more rapidly since the days when Thatcher was PM. Local government has been reduced almost to a cipher whose job is to do the bidding of, and beg for discretionary funding from, central government.

The pandemic has thrown the results of all this centralisation into stark relief – but it has also shown how ineffective it is, compared to more successful countries (i.e. nearly all of them) in managing the effects of coronavirus. Early on, repeated failures in supply of PPE followed a centralisation of procurement in the NHS. Confusing and unsafe repeated changes of policy on wearing PPE were undoubtedly driven by rationing shortages rather than any public health “science” claimed by ministers.

Centralised Test and Trace has been the opposite of Johnson and Hancock’s “world beating” claim. The number of times this and similar phrases are used by those in positions of power show just how insecure they feel inside about the alleged “Greatness” of Britain. Puerile hysteria about blue passports and the offensive jingoistic lyrics of some “traditional” songs are further evidence of this insecurity.

Without a Trace

The main reason that Track and Trace has been such a disaster – failing to meet its targets nine weeks in a row – is the dogmatic obsession with running everything from Whitehall and subcontracting (and sub-subcontracting) everything to the government’s mates in the private sector. The announced U-turn on handing more work and power to local Directors of Public Health with the necessary local government spending is happening only painfully slowly. Hancock is acting like a drowning man, not wanting to let go of any scrap of centralised power for reasons of pure dogma and an authoritarian instinct. The true black hole into which power is being sucked goes by the name of the man whose eyesight needed testing on the road to Barnard Castle.

Oh, in case you missed it, here’s a couple of things about Dido “Dodo” Harding, head of Track and Trace and the bits of Public Health England that the government hasn’t forgotten about, you may find interesting. As CEO of TalkTalk, Marketing magazine described her in these terms: “TalkTalk boss Dido Harding’s utter ignorance is a lesson to us all.” So that puts her on a par with every member of the Cabinet. And the second thing is her horsey connections as a board member of Cheltenham Racecourse. Matt Hancock is MP for Newmarket. Health experts have reckoned that at least 20,000 lives could have been saved if the UK had locked down a week earlier. And what happened during that, literally, fatal week? Why, the Cheltenham Festival, of course. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Judge Dread

One other key plank in the “abolish all dissent” plans of the CJJ concerns judicial review. Gina Miller tweeted today: “Sneaky Govt! On 31 July they announce Independent Review of Administrative Law via a press notice. Tonight they quietly put on http://Parliament.uk the scope & who’ll decide if to act on recommendations. I’ve highlighted & abbreviated.” (Gina Miller is the lawyer who won two court cases between the 2016 referendum and the 2019 general election. The first ruled that the government must seek a Parliamentary vote of approval before signing the withdrawal agreement: this led to the notorious Daily Mail “Enemies of the People” front page. The second ruled Johnson’s 2019 proroguing of parliament illegal. Between them, they reinforced the principle that ministers are not above the law.)

Johnson has found a sympathetic chair in Edward Faulks QC. Now, the next bit you simply couldn’t make up. Faulks’s middle names are “Peter Lawless”. Yes, Lawless. His wife Catherine is a Tory councillor. Lord Chancellor Robert Buckland and Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove have taken upon themselves the role of deciding what the government will do following the Review. The intention is already clear. Johnson wants to put himself and his government above the law. These are the actions of a dictator and not those of Head of Government in a supposedly democratic state.

Wise Words

I’d like to end with some wise words. The first come from the leader writer in today’s Guardian, who writes of the Cummings-Johnson Junta as “an administration that refuses to delegate but fails to govern”. To those who find this all a bit boring, the second words come from no less a figure than Plato: “The price of apathy towards public affairs is to be ruled by evil men”. That just about sums it up. You were warned.

Or, How to Stay Cheerful, in spite of the evidence…

Anyway, some bad news first.

The most reliable way of comparing countries in the coronavirus pandemic is to measure excess deaths. (It’s the least dodgy of all the various statistics.)

Top of the Charts

The PM refers to the UK government’s handling of the pandemic in England as a “massive success”. That’s only true if you count “success” as the height of the pile of dead bodies. Here’s a chart showing the excess deaths for several European countries, measured as a percentage of the total deaths expected at the time of year. Cumulative figures since the start of 2020 show England top of the charts with 7.5% excess deaths:

The Mountain Top

The charts below look like a series of mountains and show excess deaths for the four worst-hit European countries week by week. Although the other “top 3” (for deaths) show sharper peaks, it’s clear it’s taken England and Wales longer to control the outbreak: note the two smaller peaks in later weeks for England and Wales: no such pattern exists for the other countries shown.

A much fuller analysis, using official government figures, can be found at the ONS website here.

For a more readable analysis, why not try this piece from the New Statesman: Why England Was Hit Harder by Covid-19 than Any Other Country in Europe?

Economy Tanked: News v Propaganda

There are those who argue that there is a balance to be struck between saving lives during the pandemic and saving jobs. Not so. The Johnson government has failed on both. The Guardian, perhaps unsurprisingly today (as I write) runs the story UK to Plunge into Deepest Slump on Record with worst fall in GDP among G7. For political “balance”, compare and contrast that with, also today, the Telegraph headline “UK Poised to Suffer the Biggest Covid Blow of Any Major Economy”.

Still, not to worry. If you live in the fantasy universe of Johnson and his gang, it’s good news all the way. This was faithfully reported in that fantasy-filled rag, the Daily Express, a couple of days ago:

As I saw commented on Twitter that day, this front page would be what one might only expect to see in the most repressive dictatorships imaginable. It’s a disgrace to the sort of journalism that we should expect in a supposedly democratic country. (I was bemused to see, incidentally, that Express copywriters haven’t cottoned on to the fact that the UK has been measuring temperatures in degrees Celsius since 1963, only 57 years ago. Still, I suppose it fits with the paper’s target readership: those whose brains ceased to function at least half a century ago).

The Brex Street Kids

Even more good news: we don’t even have to wait until the end of the year to suffer from the entirely self-inflicted damage at the end of the EU Exit transition period. Today’s Observer cheerfully reports the exodus of the brightest and best in a piece entitled Br*xit Fuels Brain Drain as Skilled Britons Head to the EU. The “brain drain” started soon after the 2016 referendum result, the paper reports.

And yet, the Brex Street Kids running the country remain cheerful, it seems. As long as companies making Tory Party donations continue to win government contracts without due process of competitive tendering, all seems right their world. If ever there was doubt before, the “it’s one rule for us and another rule for the rest of you” attitude of those in power is plain for all to see. Blatant rule-breaking, rampant misogyny, cronyism (here’s a view from abroad) and corruption all get the blind-eye treatment by Johnson and his gang. OK, I admit that the last link on corruption takes you to a rather partisan source. But this story has been running, in various forms, in mainstream media (including the FT) on various dates since at least May. Just put “PPE contracts Tory donors” into your favourite search engine to see for yourself.

Give Us a (Second) Wave

Feeling the heat after all this doom and gloom? Then why not head off to Bournemouth beach? I’m sure you will find yourself in good company: that total stranger might shuffle up a bit to give you room to sit down. Give them a wave: after a second one of those, you may be feeling the heat a little more.

Whilst you’re there, why not bury your head in the sand?  Don’t worry, that good old English Exceptionalism will see us through! And with the Brex Street Kids in charge, what could go wrong?

I’m confused. And I feel a bit less safe than I did a week and a half ago. I know I’m not the only one.

Cracks in the Shield

I have mentioned before that I am one of the people to have been classified as “extremely vulnerable” to coronavirus and so I’m one of the so-called “shielding” group. The initial guidance letter on 23^rd March advised us to stay at home at all times for a minimum of 12 weeks: not even to leave the house for exercise or for getting food or medicines. (There were 2 copies in quick succession, from my GP and my current “overseeing” hospital.) The original guidance even recommended packing a hospital bag, just in case, including contact details for next of kin: a bit scary to receive this at the time!

For most of the next 10 weeks, there was nothing at all from gov.uk or the “NHS Coronavirus Service”: we were left just to get on with it ourselves. Many in more challenging circumstances than I felt even more abandoned: a recent edition of Woman’s Hour has some actual case studies. (The relevant audio starts around 16 minutes into this audio clip on BBC Sounds.) Over this period, I first convinced myself that our (sheltered) garden was as safe as the house – subsequently confirmed by my hospital consultant.  Then, I felt safe doing short (30 minute) walks from home for exercise: I see very few people in our rural area and those I do see all keep apart well over the 2m distancing rules.

Then, unexpectedly, on 19^th May, a third letter arrived from another hospital where I had treatment in 2018, carrying roughly the same words but extending the lockdown period by 15 days to 30^th June. Just four or five days later, even more unexpectedly, Johnson announced a relaxation of the lockdown rules for us shielders along with relaxations for the wider public.

Frankly, I’m deeply, deeply suspicious about this change of government guidance. The relaxations of the lockdown rules (in England), coupled with widespread flouting of them on beaches and at beauty spots in last weekend’s sunshine, potentially makes the “world out there” a less safe place. So I’m ignoring what Johnson said and I’m relying on more trusted sources (e.g. Independent SAGE and selected “experts” via trusted media) and carrying on much as before.

Cracks in the Lockdown

Johnson and his gang of zealots and idiots (a.k.a. HM Government) were beginning to lose their tenuous grip even before the “Cummings Lockdown Tour” of Durham and Barnard Castle was made public by the Guardian and Daily Mirror.

Several events have now occurred to undermine the government’s position – and our trust – even further.

• Cummings’ Rose Garden press conference was a load of self-interested preposterous bullshit which revealed even more actions in which he had broken the rules.
• The pathetic, craven, orchestrated defences of Cummings’ position by about 50% of the Cabinet simply destroyed any vestige of respect for the individuals concerned.
• Johnson’s ill-judged defence of Cummings exposed him to a wider audience as weak, lacking judgement and, together with the previous point, strongly reinforced the message: “one law for us and another for everyone else”.
• The many tales of raw emotion from those willing to tell their stories of self-sacrifice for the common good added a potent emotional impact to the narrative of hypocrisy and elitism.

For those tempted, or inclined, to “bend” the rules, “doing a Cummings” quickly became a source of self-justification. Key scientific opinion warned that England was easing lockdown restrictions too soon. There is widespread unease in public opinion too.

The previously announced change from the clear “stay at home” to the vaguer “stay alert” message started the rot and provoked much derision at the time. It’s been downhill for government credibility ever since.

Acting Suspiciously

So, we’ve just had a torrid couple of weeks when the government has totally lost whatever trust I had in them. I treat every single policy change with suspicion. Any so-called facts and figures from government sources I now double-check from other reliable sources of information. The daily (or now, weekdaily) government briefings have been reduced to propaganda exercises, with fiddled figures and disappearing graphs of international comparisons when they no longer served Johnson’s propaganda purposes.

A whole raft of announcements following the 25^th May rose garden fiasco were made in the next few days, each one intended to provide “good news” in a desperate attempt to move the news agenda away from Cummings’ misdeeds:

• Johnson’s bungled “return to work but not by public transport tomorrow or maybe Wednesday” announcement
• The reopening of schools to years R, 1 and 6, which came as a surprise to those working in education and leaving too little time to prepare. The rationale for choosing reception and year 1 children as well as (the expected) year 6 has never been satisfactorily explained by the government.
• Exactly the same pattern has been repeated in the announcement about the return of dentistry on Monday next. Dentists are complaining that they have had insufficient time to prepare. And what else? Sound familiar? Problems for dentists with getting sufficient PPE (Personal Protective Equipment).
• Relaxations on socialising (meetings of up to 6 people in gardens as well as parks) are basically unenforceable, making it much easier to disobey them. A recipe for increasing the virus spread, I would say.
• The much-publicised “track and trace” was “launched” last Thursday. Everybody except government knows this was a sham and the scheme will be up and running properly somewhere between the end of June and October, depending on your optimism. It’s the same old centralised-run scheme using private contractors such as Capita who in turn use unskilled staff with too little training. The promised NHS app, fanfared at the start of its trial on the Isle of Wight, has vanished out of sight for now. Rumours have it that it’s not working properly.
• And for us shielding folk? The relaxations of the rules came as a complete surprise to NHS staff and to charities supporting people with the relevant pre-existing conditions. There has been no medical evidence whatsoever to justify the change. We’re meant to take it on trust. Which leaves us feeling confused and more vulnerable.

The new rules for England, unlike Wales and Scotland, do not specify a maximum distance people are allowed to travel – hence the crowded scenes at the weekend on our beaches and beauty spots.

Scientists and government advisers are increasingly distancing themselves from government policy announcements. Do you believe that R (the reproduction rate) will stay below 1.0? I’m far from convinced.

I simply don’t trust anyone in Johnson’s rabble. It seems to me to be a basic requirement for a functioning democracy that citizens trust their government in times of crisis. Johnson and company fail on all counts.

World Beating

So I find everything the government says and does delusional. If I hear another Government Minister say the words “world beating” I shall scream! Here’s one thing we’re world beating at. On Wednesday, deaths from coronavirus in the UK (359) were greater than for all of the EU27 countries combined (311). Here’s the graph:

Full story here. And besides, why would we even want to beat the rest of the world on anything to do with the pandemic? Surely, if ever there was a time for global cooperation, for example in developing a vaccine, it’s now.

An Old, Old Enemy

So what underlies all this? I think it’s another manifestation of our old enemy, English Exceptionalism. To the rest of the world, with our plans to leave the EU, the chimera of “Global Britain” and so much more, we’re even more of a laughing stock. People in other countries pity us. Here are just a few examples:

• An Irish viewpoint
• An EU-wide perspective from 2017 (related to the UK’s relationship with the EU and the Leave vote)
• An academic perspective from 1997
• A US viewpoint from Politico (2020)
• Our failure to learn lessons from Italy’s experience from last month
• And, lastly, a recent viewpoint from that august organ, the Financial Times.

Countless further examples are out there on the internet of the degree of contempt in which the UK is held around the world. It’s demeaning, it’s embarrassing – and it has to stop.

The message gets clearer all the time. If you don’t care whether your granny dies prematurely, carry on voting Conservative. Keep your illusions. It’s just that they’re getting more lethal by the minute.

Or… The case for a Government of National Unity, with Keir Starmer in a key role, gets stronger by the minute. Then there would be at least one grownup in charge.

Day 33 of shielding. Here’s a collection of pandemic-related thoughts.

Good Deeds, Bad Deeds

Politically speaking, Boris Johnson has only ever committed one good deed. That was to catch a moderately severe case of coronavirus, and recover. When Johnson is fit to return to work – and he is fully entitled to a period of recuperation in line with medical advice – perhaps, just perhaps, we may all benefit from his experience. We can only hope that he has learnt to be a little less cavalier with the nation’s health, having been close-ish* to death himself. The idea of Johnson being a voice for caution is truly bizarre, but then stranger things have happened in these past few weeks.
(* We may not know for a long time just how close he was. The idea that anything that may emerge from Number Ten’s spokesperson bears any resemblance to the truth is just plain fanciful.)

In all other respects, Johnson has been a disaster in all phases of his adult life.

1. As a journalist, Johnson’s utter indifference to the difference between truth and lies has caused real and lasting harm. His spell as the Daily Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent in the 1990s is an obvious case in point. Almost single-handedly, he invented a whole series of myths (lies, in plain speaking) about the EU and its workings. This laid the foundation for the disaster of the 2016 referendum result. Under his editorship of The Spectator, a thousand far-right poisonous columns were encouraged, further polluting the political discourse in the UK.
2. As London mayor, he first took the glory for all the hard work done by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, in the 2012 London Olympics. As mayor, he was lazy, never on top of the detail and despised by the majority of GLA staff – information from a former GLA staffer. His tenure was all photo-opportunities (see, for example, Turd On the Wire), no substance (except for a legacy of failed vanity projects: Boris Island, Garden Bridge, etc.).
3. So is it any surprise, then, that these same deep personality traits have been repeated during his months as Prime Minister? Missing five Cobra meetings is unprecedented – to use a much-overworked word in these times. So add “holidays” to “photo-opportunities” to the previous paragraph.

So, no. I can’t think of a single thing to add to the “good” pile apart from falling ill.

Clowns and Pygmies

And don’t get me started on the sick, sick, joke laughingly called the UK’s Cabinet.

I have to keep pinching myself to remember that the de facto acting Prime Minister is one Dominic Raab. Raab: a man so far out of his depth that even the Mariana Trench doesn’t cut it as a metaphor. Raab: a man so useless he didn’t make it into the last round of voting for Tory leader last year. And the rest of the Cabinet, too rubbish to be worth remembering their names, are just a ragbag of zealots and yes-men (and a smattering of women).

We should never forget that Johnson chose his team on the basis of loyalty to the cause of Br*xit: courtiers and sycophants at the Court of the Man Who Would Be World King. Not one single member of the Cabinet was chosen on the basis of their knowledge, skills or even basic competence to do the job.

One Grownup in the Chamber

Which brings us to the one grownup in the room. Or at least in the chamber of the House of Commons. I cannot begin to describe my relief that, at long last, we have an effective, intelligent and capable Leader of the Opposition. By all accounts Kier Starmer wiped the floor with Raab at PMQs in the Commons last week. He struck just the right tone and balance between supporting the Government’s efforts to combat the pandemic and forensic examination of their many errors. It’s reasonable to expect those who govern us to be held to account, not least because (with honourable exceptions) the media are doing such a piss poor job of it.

To be fair to the BBC, critical and intelligent analysis does get airtime, even in the BBC’s news bulletins and high marks to Emily Maitlis and Newsnight for some sharp reporting. I look forward as various members of the Shadow Cabinet – not least David Lammy, of whom I’m a big fan – get more fully to grips with their briefs. Good decision making and competent governance depend upon good Opposition.

(Non-) Testing Times

The woeful lack of Government preparedness and lack of attention to warnings in the January to early March period is now becoming clearer. The lies, cover-ups and attempts to shift goalposts and rewrite history undermine our trust in those in whom we must perforce place it. Ten years of austerity has left the public realm in a weakened state – but some of the catching up has been quite impressive. The problem is that it is the heroic efforts of thousands, possibly millions of ordinary workers – many low paid – which are putting right the policy failures of years of Tory rule.

The worst fears of ventilator shortages and hospital ICUs becoming overwhelmed seem to have passed – for now. But the continuing struggle for PPE remains a national disgrace and an international laughing stock. Ministers and senior officials have given at least four versions of the reasons behind the UK failing to participate in joint EU purchasing schemes. So we know that at least three of them are lies. A recurrent theme of over-promising and under-delivering is wearing thin the nation’s patience.

As a member of the “shielding” fraternity, I await evidence of any Government thinking on an exit strategy. Do I really have to stay at home until there’s a vaccine or effective treatment?

Worshippers at the Shrine of Science

The UK Government’s repeated mantra of “following The Science” obfuscates the glaring fact of the UK repeatedly not following WHO advice. Rules for the wearing of PPE change depending on the level of supply shortages, so, in this aspect at least, “following The Science” is a lie. The secrecy surrounding the membership of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee and the revelation that the mad zealot SPAD Cummings has made several appearances further undermines the Government mantra. And as anyone with any insight into things scientific knows, “The Science” is always uncertain, tentative, confusing and sometimes contradictory.

So WHOSE science Ministers are influenced by is of utmost importance. The screeching U-turn on 23^rd March when “herd immunity” was dropped in favour of lockdown is the most obvious example so far. This was the day when one lot of scientists were so alarmed at government policy that they actually shouted loud enough to be heard over the siren songs of the behavioural scientists who had hitherto held the Prime Minister’s (short-spanned) attention.

Public Health Announcement

Finally, talk of short attention spans brings me inevitably to the one country which is making a bigger mess of this than the UK: the United States of America. So, in the best traditions of Public Health Announcements, here’s my contribution.

Want to cure yourself of the coronavirus? Just follow these easy steps.

1. (a) Procure yourself a sun-bed or (b) travel to one of your own resorts or golf courses in a hot, sunny part of your country.
2. If (b), find a lounger in a sunny spot.
3. Pour yourself a long, cool glass of bleach or household disinfectant. (As you are American, try not to put too many ice cubes in your glass, as this will dilute the beneficial effects.)
4. Ask a minion to get you a powerful light source: an industrial strength laser is ideal.
5. Settle comfortably on the sunbed or lounger.
6. Shine the light source directly onto your oversized abdomen (ignore any burning smells).
7. Drink the contents of the glass in one go.
8. Lie back and relax, contented with how much joy you have just brought to the world.

Health warning: do NOT attempt this at home, unless your name is Donald Trump.