Boris Johnson’s problems are piling up

This time last year, Boris Johnson and his team were making plans to ‘move on’ from the pandemic. He had been elected thanks to Brexit, then had to handle the Covid disaster, but he didn’t want either to define his government. ‘We have an indecent amount of great stuff to get into as soon as this ends,’ he’d tell supporters privately. But this claim had two problems. First, there would be no end to the Covid drama. Second, the ‘great stuff`’ he intended to do was often a mystery even to his own government.

For a while, the success of the vaccine procurement kept his poll ratings high. There was a hope that Britain would be the first country to jab its way back to normality. Instead, the rollout slowed and the UK has now been overtaken by France in the vaccination league table. Rows over vaccine passports, self-isolation and expensive tests for holidays have dampened the public mood. ‘Nobody is thanking us anymore,’ says one minister.

Once again, Johnson wants to focus on his domestic agenda. And once again, his plans could be derailed at any minute. A winter Covid strategy will soon be set out, as well as the worst-case scenario for managing the virus in the coming months. ‘Covid we can probably handle,’ says one minister. ‘But Covid plus flu — that’s the big fear.’ There are concerns that the flu jab (to be given out alongside boosters) will not be as effective as in the past.

In focus groups, voters complain they are tiring of Johnson and see him as a ‘one-trick pony’ Brexiteer. They are not alone in this analysis. When Tory MPs returned to the Commons chamber en masse for the recall of parliament, they repeatedly berated the Prime Minister for a lack of leadership on the situation in Afghanistan.