A well-mannered polite young footballer has shamed a leader old enough to be his dad.
And right now, I know who I’d rather have running Britain. After a series of embarrassing U-turns and climb downs, is Boris Johnson just too exhausted to do his job?
Less than a week after the BBC decided Basil Fawlty was too dangerous for the public to view (a decision they were quickly shamed into reversing), a man stood up in Parliament at Prime Minister’s Question Time on Wednesday and did a fine impersonation of Basil crossed with Mr Bean.
Boris Johnson, pictured leaving Downing Street on Wednesday, ‘did a fine impersonation of Basil crossed with Mr Bean,’ writes Janet Street-Porter
Bluster and bombast spewed out, mixed with a powerful whiff of self-righteousness.
The day before, he’d turned up as Worzel Gummidge for the 5pm media briefing.
Asked about the campaign to continue free school meal vouchers during the summer holidays (led by 22-year-old footballer Marcus Rashford), Boris Johnson claimed he ‘didn’t know about it until yesterday’.
A bare-faced lie. The Tory chair of the Commons select education committee (Robert Halfon MP) had been concerned for weeks, along with MP’s from all parties.
This was an own goal waiting to happen.
Boris was outflanked, forced to cave in – now 1.3million of Britain’s poorest children will get food vouchers during the summer holidays.
Making this concession, Worzel Gummidge was flanked at the lectern by grim faced scientists and experts who are now openly questioning his decision-making ability, which has become shambolic even by his standards.
Since Boris returned to work after his illness and became a father yet again, does he have the stamina or the concentration to do up his tie and his suit jacket, let alone oversee the roll out of his shambolic Track, Test and Trace superplan as well as overseeing the night feeds and nappies?
Former MP Anna Soubry wrote scathingly: ‘Yes people of Britain, that blustering, scruffy hasn’t-got-a-clue man on television is your PM……Heaven help us all’.
In the end, it took a 22-year-old footballer, Marcus Rashford, to force yet another U-turn from the government with a series of impassioned messages to his 2.9million followers on social media.
Marcus Rashford, unlike Boris, attended state school, receiving free meals.
Recently, he has raised over £20million to help poor children. In short, Mr Rashford is a grown-up to be reckoned with, well spoken, quiet and dignified.
Someone with values and a sense of purpose. When challenged by a silly government minister (Therese Coffey) about people not being able to take showers during lockdown, he simply asked her to think again.
Perhaps she didn’t realise that if you’re poor and can’t pay bills, hot water is rationed.
Has Boris finally lost the plot? He’s made a small attempt to tame his hair, but what about his mental agility? During public appearances he once had the skills of a bingo caller when it came to grabbing the moment.
He’s a crowd-pleaser who never fails to use a superlative – ‘world-beating’ is a favourite. Is this an inherited trait from his father Stanley whose family say suffers from ‘relentless positivity’? An admirable quality, in the right circumstances, but since lockdown, have we (and his army of new ex-labour fans) become hyper-sensitive?
Cooped up with our own families, lacking easy-going get-togethers with friends and work mates, have we started to tire of Boris and his over-the-top bonhomie?
The booming voice can seem a tad too loud – maybe it’s time to turn the volume down.
The PM’s RAF voyagerwill be repainted at a cost of £900,000- to ‘better represent the UK around the world’.
The exuberant manner and the big gesture seem out of place when the rest of us are spending hours a day standing in queues to buy food or (this week) clothing.
Last Sunday he needed a photo opportunity to get back in the news but it felt hollow.
Standing in a deserted shopping mall clutching a takeaway coffee whilst pleading with us to ‘spend for Britain’ to boost the economy, sounded desperate.
Boris only bought a coffee, and he’s on full pay. Most shoppers aren’t that easily enticed.
Boris is a changed man since his illness- thin skinned and nervy, with wild eyes and a desperate look when asked anything off script, as if he’s struggling to remain on top of his brief.
So many experts, so many statistics, so many deaths. He doesn’t want anyone in his briefings who might stray off message.
But bombast and optimism for the future don’t play so well with a population whose grandmothers are dying alone in their rooms in care homes and who are worried their jobs may soon not exist.
Boris is also now dealing with major unfinished business – Brexit, but in very changed circumstances.
All the countries involved have been affected by the virus, their attitudes to incomers and visitors altered for the foreseeable future.
Boris says he wants to trumpet how brilliant Brits are. Two years ago (when Foreign Secretary) he demanded the official plane used for his negotiations was repainted in red, white and blue.
It is finally being carried out at a cost of £900,000- to ‘better represent the UK around the world’.
But the main news about the UK worldwide is the fact that our government’s mismanagement of the pandemic has led to over 42,000 deaths, the third highest and that we still have one of the worst death rates in Europe.
No shiny new paint job can erase that horrible truth. In recent weeks the PM’s popularity has been sliding as the public tire of lockdown, worry about their parents and grandparents and get fed up of self-educating their children.
Boris Johnson during Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions in the House of Commons. Mr Johnson is now just one point ahead of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer in public opinion polls
Plus, we’re facing the worse recession in 300 years.
In recent polls Boris’s suitability as Prime Minister is just one point ahead of opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer.
Overall, his popularity has sunk to minus 6 points, while clean cut anodyne Starmer has bounced up to 24.
The Tory party’s ratings have dropped 23 points in the last eight weeks as the public become increasingly fed up with Covid cockups.
After Boris defended chief aide Dominic Cummings’ 260 mile car trip during lockdown, one in five voters said they were less inclined to follow governmental guidelines.
In the past couple of weeks, he has made three big U turns; over charging foreign NHS workers for healthcare, over allowing MPs to vote remotely, and over vouchers for free school meals for the poor.
The cost of repainting that plane would have fed 60,000 kids for a week.
Boris Johnson has bungled getting kids back into school, (unless they attend a private establishment), bungled the exam schedule – leaving a generation of young people anxious about their employability, and he STILL can’t decide whether we should keep one or two metres apart!
And this is the chap we’re trusting to tie up Brexit.