Just about the only reassuring thing to come out of the latest Downing Street press conference was that Dominic Raab does not yet have his hands on the nuclear button. Because in almost every other respect the foreign secretary appeared to be cosplaying Peter Sellers in Dr Strangelove. A man so clinically unstable he has yet to realise he is by far the most dangerous person in any room he enters. The pathology manifests itself in different ways. Often Raab is a ball of barely repressed anger, the vein on this forehead throbbing metronomically as he tries to front out any tricky questions. Today, he was going for the more laid-back approach – the Mr Nice Guy who definitely had no guilty secrets. Unfortunately for him, he had more to hide than the usual collection of unsolved murders. Sooner or later, someone is going to have to have a quiet word with Dom and tell him he’s crap at this gig. Then so is almost everyone else in the cabinet. To be fair, Dom had been dealt a particularly bad hand. After the usual disclaimers about the government having done a generally brilliant job so far, the foreign secretary was rather obliged to give an update on the prime minister’s health. Something he tried to mumble away as an afterthought. Boris Johnson was in top form, excellent spirits. In fact, he was having such a good time running the country from his bed in St Thomas’ hospital that he was planning to extend his stay to an extra night.
There was basically nothing wrong with Boris, was the message. He’d just dropped in to hospital because he was getting a bit bored at home. Understandably, no one was particularly convinced by Raab’s “He’s in good spirits” explanation of the prime minister’s health. After all, most people who have had even a mild version of the coronavirus have reported they were whacked out for the best part of a week and good for next to nothing. Yet here was Raab trying to persuade us that despite having a high temperature, a cough and breathing difficulties, Johnson was on top form and fit for anything. Being prime minister was actually a piece of piss that anyone could do from hospital. No big deal. “He’s in good spirits,” Raab again repeated, his eyes darting anxiously around the room. Mr Cool was now looking decidedly ruffled and he inadvertently let slip the truth. The last time he had actually spoken to the prime minister was on Saturday, the day before Boris was admitted to hospital. So we were asked to accept that for the last two days he had been entirely out of the loop and that Boris had been running the show on his own. Not necessarily bad news for the country, but badly credible. There was only one inescapable conclusion. That Boris doesn’t rate either Raab or Michael Gove as suitable deputies to run the country in his absence and reckons that he could probably still do a better job than either of them from his hospital bed. It’s a lack of trust with which most of the country has some sympathy. Occasionally, Raab would desperately look to the newly recovered chief medical officer, Chris Whitty, and the Foreign Office deputy chief medical adviser, Angela McLean, for reassurance. Which they both refused to give. Though the nation was pleased to see him back, Whitty rather looked as if he would be elsewhere. Probably visiting his second home, like the Scottish chief medical officer. That way he would have to resign and wouldn’t have to put himself through any more of these excruciating press conferences. Long before the end, Raab had managed to muddle up even the most basic of messages. Last week, both Boris and the health secretary, Matt Hancock, had offered a glimmer of hope with a lockdown exit strategy, involving arm bands and antibody test. All that was now long forgotten as Dom pointed to some slides that showed it was far too early to be making any of those kinds of predictions. We were going backwards fast. A consistent display in hopelessness by the hopeless. A briefing that had only served to muddy the waters further: the Queen’s call for national unity a distant memory. For what came through clearest was that no one in government really had a clue what was happening. Even the de facto prime minister wasn’t being informed about the prime minister’s condition. Within hours the mirage had dropped. The press conference a total irrelevance. What Dom had or hadn’t known was immaterial. During the afternoon Boris’s condition had worsened and he was being transferred to intensive care. Dom was now acting prime minister. All that anyone could do now was put their trust in the doctors and pray for the best. The crisis had just got significantly worse.