We were still a long way short of John Bercow’s last prime minister’s questions hurrah. That clocked in at a mind-numbing 70 minutes. But with parliament due to go into early recess that evening and with no guarantee of a date for its return, Speaker Lindsay Hoyle chose to effectively run two separate half-hour PMQs consecutively. In theory it was a good idea, as MPs are going to have almost no opportunities to hold Boris Johnson and the government to account during a national emergency. In practice, it rather fell flat. The only questions on anyone’s mind right now are on the coronavirus, but Boris has precious little by way of any answers. Just the usual evasions followed by his new slogan. ‘‘Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Help save lives.’’ That’s the closest the government has to a policy right now. PMQs could have gone on for another couple of hours and no one would have been any the wiser. This was Jeremy Corbyn’s last PMQs and it initially felt as if he was determined to fade himself out with a faint whimper. His voice was croaky – he didn’t sound well – and though his questions were all perfectly reasonable, he was struggling to inject them with any passion or feeling. And not even his special advisers got to see him shine. They were all thrown out of the press gallery for taking photos on their phones. Perhaps they thought they had seen it all before anyway. But as he got into his second set of six questions, some of the intensity returned. He made a point of praising not just the frontline NHS staff who were struggling to fight the pandemic with limited resources, but also the cleaners who made so many hospitals and workplaces safe. He also raised key issues about help for the self-employed, the level of testing, construction sites forcing workers to come in and a universal credit system that wasn’t fit for purpose even when it didn’t have an extra 500,000 people trying to log in over the past 10 days. Boris did his best to sound statesmanlike and gracious – even he can see this isn’t a time for petty point-scoring – but he never sounded wholly convincing. This isn’t what he signed up for when he became prime minister, and faking it to make it is a lot harder than it sounds. Telling the country it will need to make sacrifices is not that convincing when the only sacrifices Boris has ever made have been of other people on the altar of his own career. What answers Boris did give were worse than useless. He couldn’t explain why testing levels were still way down on what he had promised the week before: all he could offer was the promise of millions of tests soon. When exactly, he didn’t know.
He pifflepafflewifflewaffled about the self-employed. Some were very rich, so it would be wrong to help the starving before the system had been properly finessed. It was all very difficult, he said, but an announcement would be coming soon. He was also keen that only those who had to go to work should go to work, though obviously it was up to bosses to decide who needed to go to work. Can’t afford to alienate any possible donors to the Tory party, after all. Peak nonsense was reached with several Conservative MPs congratulating Boris for the clarity of his messaging. Just about the only clarity the government has has shown so far has been in its obvious willingness to delay. We live in mañana times. The government had two months to learn from the spread of the coronavirus in China, but chose to celebrate Brexit day, fail to deal with the floods and take 10 days off over half-term instead. Any of the decisions it now says it is working night and day on could have been taken weeks ago. Boris’s offer to wrap an arm of comfort around every worker sounded increasingly hollow. Nor was there much comfort to be had from the daily Downing Street press conference later in the day. Both chief medical officer Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Patrick Vallance poured cold water on the promise Boris had made at PMQs that millions of antibody tests could be available as early as next week. Whitty even said it was going to be a close run thing whether the NHS would be able to cope. Boris just looked done in. Like a children’s entertainer who had long since used up every failsafe gag and trick, long since lost his audience. His eyes are now barely detectable red dwarf pinpricks, hidden by bags collapsing in on themselves as his face melts into the despair of premature old age. All the questions focused on matters of trust. On tests, prioritising the economy before lives and acting soon enough. Any country wants to believe in its leader, but it’s clear that now many people have lost faith in Boris’s judgment calls. Even Whitty and Vallance appeared to have their doubts about him, qualifying their support to the limits of their brief and staying well clear of the politics. At critical times, Boris has been found wanting. The wrong person for such a critical time. The only moment of inspiration was the news that 405,000 people had registered as NHS volunteers in the past 24 hours. The UK will get through this, but when it does, it will have been the people, not the government, who should take the credit. The lions leading the donkeys.