This time there was no daily Downing Street press conference. Not even an ersatz People’s PMQs with spoon fed set ups from Classic “Let the old and the vulnerable die” Dom. Because in the last few days it’s become clear Boris Johnson can’t even prepare properly for a scheduled presser. Only the day before he was telling everyone to keep 2 metres away from other people when he was standing about a yard from the government’s deputy chief medical officer. There was a time when he could just about manage two pages of A4 as a briefing paper. Now his concentration span can’t even manage that. So instead a we got a six-minute televised address to the nation. Less chance of any unforced cock-ups and mixed messages that way. Telling people that they should try to keep their distance from one another but a day out to Skegness probably wouldn’t hurt hadn’t proved a spectacular success. So this time Boris tried to get serious. People should stay indoors, other than to exercise on their own or with family members, do essential shopping or go to work. It wasn’t a total lockdown, but as good as.
The weird thing was, he was only telling most people something they had already clocked long before him. It’s been the country nudging the government into action, rather than the other way round. After all, these were the sensible measures many had already taken. On the coronavirus, the UK has had two months to learn from China what was coming and to to make necessary preparations. And in that time Boris had managed to do next to nothing, apart from taking a week off over the half-term recess to pick a wedding date and argue over baby names. Still, he must be running out of possibilities by now. What was seemingly incomprehensible to Boris was that people really were now more interested in saving their own lives and those of others than being able to have a drink and a snout with Nigel Farage, Tim Wetherspoon and other members of the Brexit libertarian death cult. Earlier in the day during the debate on the coronavirus emergency contingencies bill in the Commons, Needy Matt Hancock, who’s aged so much in the last few days he no longer needs to be IDed in offies, had said: “The government had made the most comprehensive public communications plans in history.” Presumably he reckons recent messages to be the best since “a leech a day keeps the doctor away”. Still, better late than never. At least he had now heard of the police: a security enforcement service that had caught him by surprise the day before, though his hymn to the NHS felt hollow from a government that had cut its resources significantly over the past 10 years. But this was a last chance to head off a catastrophe on the Italian scale. Boris looked thoroughly miserable as he was making the statement. Not just because of the gravity, but because even he couldn’t escape the irony. Imagine a person who has built his entire career on being economical with the truth having to implore everyone to trust him. A prime minister who doesn’t even look as if he could tell the truth to his reflection. All his life Boris has wanted to be Churchill. Now he has met his Dunkirk, he realises he just can’t do it. He doesn’t have the leadership. He wants to be loved too much. Inside he’s a ball of foetal need. The tousled hair is no longer endearing. Now it just looks shambolic. And the mind is as confused as the barnet. He’s never come across a difficult decision he hasn’t wanted to fudge. Marriages, affairs, Brexit. All compartmentalised away into a happy place where there are no consequences. Being Draco the Lawmaker just doesn’t sit well with him. Now the lives of thousands of people are at stake, and he can’t bear the responsibility. He was only ever in it for the lols. He clasped his hands, as if trying to hold himself together, but his body is folding in on itself. Bags upon bags upon bags. Soon all that will be left is a pool of blubbery blob, its voice a faint echo of Rob Brydon’s “small man trapped in a box”. With the odd bit of Latin thrown in.