There’s no one better than Boris

Eighteen months ago, I wrote a column for this magazine saying I regretted having been such a Boris enthusiast for the past 40 years. As a lockdown sceptic, I was disillusioned by his role in the greatest interference in personal liberty in our history. Where was the mischievous, freedom-loving, Falstaffian character I’d grown to love? Oliver Hardy had turned into Oliver Cromwell.

Mercifully, Roundhead Boris was a temporary aberration. Indeed, the furrowed-browed, finger-wagging Prime Minister of those endless Downing Street press briefings turned out to be just another act in the Covid pantomime, with the Boris of old making whoopee behind the scenes. I am probably one of the few people in the country who was delighted to discover that he didn’t take the ludicrous coronavirus regulations seriously, even if he is the head of the government that came up with them. I will only regard the forthcoming Sue Gray report as ‘devastating’ for Boris if he doesn’t leap from its pages as the raspberry-blowing leader of the up-all-night, hard-drinking Downing Street fast set.

I am one of the few who was delighted that he didn’t take the ludicrous Covid rules seriously

I’m not being wholly facetious. His rule-breaking is a good reason for keeping him in office because it makes it politically impossible for him to impose another lockdown. How can Boris ask the public to observe any more of those ridiculous restrictions when he flagrantly ignored them himself? Even if there is another wave and the leaders of the NHS start waving their shrouds about on the BBC, he will have no choice but to stick with his ‘living with Covid’ strategy.