I hope I was wrong about Boris being useless

“Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds”. Attributed to both Emerson and Keynes, if it was good enough for them, it surely provides cover for a political commentor’s tergiversations over Boris Johnson. No. More is required, both in apology and in explanation. Back in the 1970s when the Labour Party was the worst sufferer over splits on Europe, Denis Healey gleefully boasted about ratting and re-ratting. We should neither seek to emulate his shameless cynicism – nor hope to do so. We lack his thespian bravura. Apropos of that, let us try to explain Boris.

In 2019, I wrote – often – that he had neither the moral nor the intellectual qualities necessary for the premiership. It was an easy case to make. But he won an election, and won big. He appeared to be the man of the hour. Covid was still lurking in Wuhan, somewhere between a carelessly closed lab door and a wet fish market. The Corbyn virus seemed a far greater threat to the Labour party than Covid was to the world economy. Then the world turned upside down.

Boris did not respond well. He made one tragic mistake. David Cameron organised a letter, also signed by Sir John Major plus Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, urging the PM to put a General in charge of the ground war.

Generals understand logistics and improvisation. They know how to take decisions and give orders. Above all, they understand the importance of grip. There was little of that in the first few weeks of the Covid campaign.
Fortunately for the Government’s reputation, their incompetence was not unique. Remember, early on, how everyone was praising the Swedes? Their subsequent figures did not justify that praise. The Germans were also credited with Teutonic efficiency. This time, it was not as good as it had been cracked up to be. No country in the advanced world comes out that well.

But – we have the vaccine. There appears to be only one difficulty: pen-pushers and job’s-worths trying to block the vaccine’s progress from the manufactory to the bloods-stream. That is also the route back to normality. It is not too late for a General. It seems clear that the latest virus is more virulent than the earlier version though also less lethal. Those of us who proposed dealing with Covid by Cohit – common sense, herd immunity and testing – seem to have been overtaken by events. We have got to get on with the vaccine. Churchill headed many of his Memos: “action this day”. That is the spirit.

Oddly enough, grip seems less necessary over Brexit. The expected chaos has not materialised, though there is time. But there is an analogy with a sea voyage. Just before the ship casts off, you could almost stretch out an arm and shake hands with someone on the quayside. Five minutes later, you would need binoculars to spot those who were seeing you off. A few minutes further on, and there are merely specks. The momentum is behind Britain’s departure, and everyone is getting used to it. There is also a point which Boris cannot make. We have all known couples who had to get divorced before they could be friends again. The EU and the UK need each other. In a world of economic challenges and global instability, it would be madness to sulk about Brexit. There will be trouble, but as the past few weeks have proved, trouble is manageable. Before he starts doing that, David Frost, the UK’s chief negotiator and one of the great public servants of recent years, should be allowed some R and R. A whole day off, perhaps, though not all at once.

But there is another hideous difficulty. In the last year, there has been a grave threat to British education. Many state schools have buckled under the strain. Life is obviously easier in the private sector, for self-evident reasons, but from what I hear, the public schools have been good at logistics and improvisation: the ‘grip’ spirit. A lot of state schools seem to have been happier belly-aching, abetted by their Union leaders, who all seem to have sprouted doctorates. Where did those come from?

While this have been happening, the Education Secretary has been Gavin Williamson, the anti-grip. Poor fellow: as a Cabinet Minister, he is pond life. If he were a family pet, he would have to be hidden away from the RSPCA, who might prosecute the owners for failing to have him put down to avoid further suffering.

There could very well be disruption today. Some children will turn up to closed schools. Others will fail to arrive when expected. Meanwhile, the urgent necessity is a small task-force working day and night to a tight deadline, to work out how to mitigate the damage children have suffered from lost terms’ learning. The chairman should probably be a tough-minded headmaster rather than a General, and what would be wrong from a public-school head beak used to demanding the highest standards (as long as it is not Trendy Hendy from Eton). Whoever, he has a crucial task.

These are only some of the most urgent items on Boris’s agenda: five thousand words would not cover the rest. But let us return to the beginning. Boris is a Protean character, a man of masks, impossible to read. Socrates’ maxim was know thyself. Boris cannot be accused of that. I now hope that I was wrong about his lack of Prime Ministerial qualities, and there are encouraging precedents. Think of the three most earth-shaking Premiers in the last hundred-odd years. Lloyd George, widely distrusted, compulsively self-serving, lucky to survive the Marconi affair, and by late 1916, the man to win the War. He did, and was ejected from office less than five years after his appointment.

Churchill was a vastly better human being, but in 1940 he was also widely distrusted. He was also the man to win the War. He did, could not then be chucked out as leader of the Tory party, and went on too long. Thatcher in 1979 by no means commanded the loyalty of her party. But she was the woman to win the peace, which did not save her from the sack in 1990. In their confrontations with great events, all three summoned up the daemonic aspects of their personalities. Could Boris claim the same over Brexit? Probably not, but there is a point which his opponents should concede. He got Brexit done. He may well have been the only British politician who could have achieved that. So where does he go from here?