Optimism and hope feel under attack
Boris Johnson’s illness is so shocking because he embodies positivity and a robust love of life
Boris Johnson is a man who hates losing. So much so that when I once sacrificed my wicket to ensure a tie in a friends and family game of cricket in his back garden, he didn’t speak to me for what felt like a lifetime.
In truth, the Johnson cold shoulder probably only lasted a matter of minutes, and was more mild joshing than serious scolding, yet it gave me a brief but important glimpse of the fight in the belly of the man, the type of fight he will no doubt need in great measure in the days ahead.
Boris is strong, stoic and a fighter. A scrapper and a survivor. An optimist. He will have resented being hospitalised, but now that it’s serious he will for once be doing what he’s told. Above all he’s in good hands and he’s fitter than he looks. But even though I know all this, and I’ve told myself countless times that he will be OK, I – along with millions of others, I suspect – can’t help feeling utterly discombobulated.
It’s not just that our nationwide resolve has been battered. First by the fear and anxiety that surrounds catching this thing. And second by the seismic change in the way we now have to live our lives.
It’s not just that some of us will have suffered loss in recent days, while others among us feel profoundly anxious about a loved one fighting the disease. What makes the news about our Prime Minister so shocking is not just that we think “oh no, if Boris can get it anyone can” – important message as that is.
I think it’s more that we feel collectively as if optimism and hope and spontaneity – the stuff Boris Johnson stands for and encapsulates – are also under attack.
People feel that they know him. They like to think he’s just one of us, he understands us, he’s doing his best. And they want to believe we will all be OK. That’s the power of Boris the communicator.
Like him or loathe him, when that voice falls silent we all feel a sense of foreboding.
He will not want people feeling that way. When I asked him last week if he was getting better, he was more interested in asking after my wife and three-week-old daughter. In the end, he said: “We’re going to beat this thing.” By which he meant we the country, not “we” Boris Johnson.
He has always been a reluctant patient, often working through colds and coughs with no more than honey and lemon and a shrug of the shoulders. I don’t remember him ever even taking a day off through ill health. Until now.
But Westminster appears rife with this disease and it’s hardly surprising, given the number of civil servants, ministers and journalists who surround the Prime Minister on any given day, that he is now one of Covid-19’s many victims.
Like you and me he is human. He has loved ones, children, siblings, a mum and dad. But he’s also responsible for decisions that ultimately impact on the wellbeing of 66 million people, in a crisis only surpassed in modern times by a global war.
It’s one hell of a responsibility but one he’d be the first to tell you he doesn’t shoulder alone. Doctors shoulder it. Nurses as well. Paramedics. And care workers. Teachers. The police. The Army. Delivery drivers. Farmers. Supermarket staff. Indeed all of us doing our part by simply staying at home.
Three years after frustrating Boris’s competitive spirit at garden cricket, I watched the then foreign secretary mercilessly dispatch my seven-yearold daughter’s ball into the lake at Chevening during a “friendly” game of rounders. It was done with elan, an impish glint, a massive smile, and a ruffling of that Johnson hair. It was so him – all positivity, fun, and optimism and yet, underpinning it all, there was a steely determination.
I trust and pray he will be OK – we all do. You may admire him, equally you may dislike him, but he is our Prime Minister, and the sooner he is back levelling with us, leading from the front, and renewing that sense of optimism and hope, the better for our national psyche and our collective morale.