Boris Johnson: The Clown King

Jonathan Bak in the Times Literary Supplement:

....The most crucial question for a public inquiry will be not whether the UK's response to the pandemic was bad, but why it was so bad....in the UK's highly centralized system of government, the abilities and character of the prime minister dominate any crisis response. 

It is impossible to read these pages without bemoaning that, in the nation's worst crisis since 1945, Britons are governed by someone so obviously unsuited for the job. Over the past year, the man who urged the nation "to take back control" refused to take decisions and sought to displace responsibility wherever possible. 

In his masterly recent portrait of Johnson in the Guardian, Edward Docx describes the prime minister as a clown whose rise to power was built on persuading the audience to collude in the secret that all human endeavour is no more than a complicated joke. 

Johnson, on receiving bad news in his daily meetings, tends to keep his head bowed. He then looks up quickly, his eyes darting around the room, to find someone to join him in a rueful smirk. The NHS needs more ventilators? "Let's call it Operation Last Gasp". 

The temperament behind that humour guided the country on its bleakly circular trajectory. Escaping from the cycles of lockdown and release will require not just vaccines but a different, steadier approach; perhaps even a different leader.....

Rob's comment:

Note that the worst handling of the pandemic has been by conservative governments: Johnson in the UK, Trump in the US, and Bolsonaro in Brazil.

From the Guardian story:

....Research by Imperial College shows that up to 26,800 deaths could have been prevented had the first lockdown come just one week earlier. 

Then came the care homes disaster, the premature lifting of the first lockdown, the ignoring of Sage throughout September. And only a clown would begin the October announcement of a second lockdown with the phrase “good evening and apologies for disturbing your Saturday evening with more news of Covid” when the nation was already stiff with the legions of dead and had been waiting all day to hear from its leader. 

The run-up to Christmas was a catastrophe of mismanagement that all-too-inevitably became the January of 30,000 more people dead. Are we supposed to forget this legacy and “move on”? That is what Johnson is now tacitly suggesting. 

Like all storytellers, he knows the public remember endings, less so beginnings and seldom the middle. He did all he can, he says. He knows it’s not true, but that is what he is selling....