On coronavirus and Brexit, Boris Johnson is a prisoner of his own artless drivel

It has been speculated for some time that Boris Johnson, having finally got the job he so badly craved, is less than fully content with his lot in life.

And really, who can blame him? Oh for a day in the life of Johnson. It is an especially cruel and cautionary tale. It is not merely that he spends his days having to do things he doesn’t want to do, but that he is prevented from doing the things he doesn’t want to do, by people who actually do want to do them, but won’t.

Somewhere, on a slightly different branch of history, Johnson is still firing out libertarian columns for the Daily Telegraph, a fully paid-up member of the anti-lockdown, anti-mask brigade. He’s still writing his one column about the greatness of the days that lie ahead when we leave the EU with no deal, so let’s just get on and do it.

And yet here he is, stuck on this branch, desperately trying to introduce severe lockdown-style restrictions across most of the north of England, while various Labour mayors and council leaders tell him that he can’t. And here he is, issuing breathless statements about how the trade talks with the EU are over, it’s all the EU’s fault, and that “we will prosper mightily as an independent nation”, but at the same time, not actually, you know, walking away from the talks, which will continue in London next week.

It’s hard to know which of the two world-beating disasters entirely of his own making the prime minister finds more torturous.

On the first hand, oh the agony involved in being the guy bringing in the restrictions, having to read all the baseless, evidence-free, not merely scientifically but functionally illiterate outrage they have created that you would so love to be churning out yourself.

How can Johnson cope with being the guy who prompts, to take but one example, former England cricket captain Michael Vaughan to tell his many Instagram followers that “The clocks go back this weekend, I’m going to set mine to 1940, when this country had some bollocks."?

Oh Vaughan, it has some bollocks now. There’s complete and utter bollocks everywhere you look, all the way from 10 Downing Street to the ex-England cricket captain’s social media. Sadly, very many people have now informed Vaughan that actually, the clocks don’t go back until next weekend. Many of us had imagined the great Vaughany, in the small hours of Saturday night, winding the sitting room clock back an hour and not quite catching a fork of lightning flashing over the dark horizon, before going to bed. And then the paper lands on the mat with a thud with news that Winston Churchill has been elected leader of the Conservative Party.

Quite what happens after Vaughany rushes with giddy excitement out on to the cobbled streets will be a matter for the Goodnight Sweetheart remake writers room, but we would like to hope there will be various people on hand who are a little surprised to be told that a) there’s five more years of unimaginable human misery to come and b) this man from the future has come to endure it all entirely voluntarily because he’s got nothing let to watch on Netflix, whatever that is.

We also would like to hope it ends with our protagonist crammed into a landing craft off Sword Beach. The pipes sound, the doors drop and suddenly he must run, not this time to the Pavilion End for a quick single but into the howling whir of machine-gun fire. “Please Lord! Please!” one imagines England’s 2005 Ashes hero might wail. “Just let me go back and I swear I’ll never complain about having to wear a mask in Tescos ever again!”

Arguably, we digress, and by noon, so had the prime minister. Now it was the European Union’s turn to tell him that cakeism is only a viable proposition for columnists, not for actual, real politicians.

That, no, it was never the easiest free trade deal in human history, the current EU summit in Brussels has for some time been considered Brexit’s very, very last chance saloon.

A week ago, Johnson told EU leaders that unless they were prepared to shift their negotiating position fundamentally, then the UK was ready to leave without a deal and it would do so at this summit. It is, more than anything, quite incredible, that four years on, these words are still able to exit my fingers and count as news.

Could it possibly be the case that after four and a half years of telling the EU we’re serious about leaving without a deal but not actually doing it, that they are, perhaps, just never going to believe us, partly because it is transparently obvious it isn’t true?

And yet, here we were, telling them one more time that how serious we are that we really will leave without a deal, long after our most recent self-imposed deadline had come and gone, but you know, not actually leaving.

Johnson’s 30-second video clip to announce we’re walking away but not actually walking away was, in a crowded field, one of his best. Arguably never before has he so succinctly summed up how all he has ever had to offer is complete bunk right from the very start. He begins in a forlorn tone, with talk of “high hearts” and how sad it all is that the EU won’t change their minds, and how reluctantly, that means everything’s going to be absolutely great.

This thing we so desperately want, well we’re not going to get it, and that’s fine because we’re better off without it anyway. If you’re still trying to convince them you’re serious about leaving without a deal, you do have to try and put together a case for doing so that can sustain itself for more than 15 seconds. But alas, he cannot. He really is performing at his best. 

Where it all leaves us, who knows? Coronavirus is resurgent, and the nation is too fractured, fed up and confused to care. Whether you choose to blame the prime minister or various northern mayors is a matter of personal choice, though it hardly seems the hardest one to make.

And whatever happens with Brexit, well, that’s a mystery too, not least as the prime minister can’t manage two consecutive, non-contradictory statements of complete garbage on the matter. What is, at this point, abundantly clear, is that it won’t be bearing any resemblance to any of the promises made four and a half years ago, but that’s been clear for years.

It is very, very hard to imagine the country wouldn’t be very serious indeed about walking away from Brexit if it could. But, as we shall come to see, it’s just as hopelessly trapped as its prime minister.