The prime minister is unable to invest his office with any dignity, but this is an emergency and he should have the benefit of the doubt
Just now, Boris Johnson matters. He matters because he is Britain’s prime minister at a critical moment in the pandemic. The authority of his office should be directed at achieving the one reasonably sure defence against it: mass vaccination. Sunday night’s announcement that the vaccination programme is being stepped up to get third doses to all adults by the end of December will require a million doses to be administered every day for the rest of the month. That is a tall order and may not be achieved, but it should be treated as a national priority to fend off another Christmas and New Year in lockdown.
Johnson must know that his authority, along with his dignity, is in the worst possible state to order this. His appearance on Sunday, his hair artfully dishevelled, dwarfed by an absurdly large union jack, was that of a clown acting a Ruritanian princeling. His daily photo-opportunities, his misjudgments, mendacities and “global Britain” vacuities insult public intelligence and merely line him up for one fall after another. He has become the media’s favourite victim, a politician inviting constant ribaldry and rotten eggs.
Simon Jenkins is a Guardian columnist
