Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O’Flynn

Boris Johnson’s ‘method’ isn’t working

Boris Johnson (photo: Getty)

Is the Boris Johnson ‘method’ reaching the end of the road and if it is, can the Prime Minister find a new one – or is he altogether done for?

The method, by all accounts deployed across more than one facet of the Prime Minister’s life, involves issuing a series of charmingly delivered apologies for things not having turned out as he’d led his audience to believe they would.

Each apology is immediately followed by a new pledge that matters will take a decisive turn for the better very soon. And thus does the PM buy himself more time in which to extricate himself from scrapes.

On Thursday he was at it again during a Downing Street press conference called to sugar the pill of a second national lockdown.

‘This is not a repeat of the spring,’ he said, ‘these measures are time-limited… these rules will expire and on the second of December we plan to move back to a tiered approach. There is light at the end of the tunnel.’

Yet anyone who has been paying proper attention surely thinks there will be another tunnel very soon.

In mid-March the PM told us: ‘I think, looking at it all, that we can turn the tide within the next 12 weeks and I’m absolutely confident that we can send coronavirus packing in this country.’

A week later, announcing the first lockdown, he promised: ‘I can assure you that we will keep these restrictions under constant review. We will look again in three weeks and relax them if the evidence shows we are able to.’

In mid-June, upon the expiry of his 12-week timeframe, he moved the goalposts a little, adding: ‘We went through the peak and… flattened the sombrero… We’ve turned the tide on it. We haven’t, yet, finally defeated it.

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