In thrall to a Brexit ideology that despises expertise, Johnson and Cummings were bound to botch the pandemic response
The serial incompetence of Boris Johnson’s government is not an accident. It may look like haplessness, but that is to mistake the symptom for the cause. Instead this government’s ineptitude is a function of both the character of the man at the top and the defining creed of his administration.
Reminders of our rulers’ clumsiness arrive with such regularity that it’s easy to become inured. This week we had the prime minister “misspeak” as he botched an attempt to explain the new regulations imposed by the government he leads. Perhaps that’s an easy mistake to make, considering the ever-shifting nature of the advice, best captured by that short video of Matt Lucas channelling the PM as he tells Britons, “Go to work, don’t go to work. Go outside, don’t go outside.”
