The coronavirus crisis has searingly exposed the prime minister’s flaws as a leader
At Christmas time last year, the only cloud on Boris Johnson’s horizon was how he was going to pay for a winter break with Carrie on Mustique. The answer, rather typically, was that someone else would pick up the tab. The opposition later raised a complaint, but few Tories begrudged their leader his getaway in the Caribbean. He had just delivered a “stonking” election victory, their best since Margaret Thatcher was at her zenith. He was, in the words of one senior Tory, “lord of all he surveys”. Celebratory Christmas receptions at Number 10 were pungent with the scent of hubris.
Being a student of the classics, the prime minister should have known that the gods will punish arrogance. Nemesis came in the shape of an invisible microbe. The pandemic has tested the mettle of leaders around the planet, but among the mature democracies few were as singularly ill-equipped to handle a crisis of this nature and magnitude as Britain’s prime minister. He has looked good only when benchmarked against Donald Trump.
