Johnson back on form as pub garden beer and a haircut finally beckon
At last, Britain is starting the long journey back to normality – or something vaguely like it. And so, too, it appears, is Boris Johnson. Since his return to work, the Prime Minister has often seemed pallid, subdued, fatigued, and his actions correspondingly hesitant. But yesterday in the Commons, as he announced the easing of lockdown, he was sounding a lot more like his old self.
Back were the punchy ebullience, the playful pugnacity, the rhetorical panache (“Our long national hibernation is beginning to come to an end”).
There was even the odd joke. “Almost as eagerly awaited as a pint will be a haircut,” he boomed, “particularly by me.” I don’t doubt it. His hair is currently a cloud of white fluff. It looks like stuffing bursting from a ripped teddy bear. One by one he listed the businesses, industries and attractions to be released from lockdown: hotels, pubs, libraries, cinemas, even model villages.
Tory MPS sounded deeply relieved. But not just about the easing of restrictions. They also sounded relieved about the Prime Minister’s seeming return to form. Robert Goodwill (Scarborough & Whitby) beamed that Mr Johnson was “firing on all cylinders”. Lucy Allan (Telford) hailed his “fantastic energy”. Theo
Clarke invited him for a pint in Stafford. Mark Menzies invited him to get his hair cut in Fylde.
One or two of them got a little carried away. Gareth Johnson (Con, Dartford) solemnly proclaimed that by returning to the pub, drinkers would be doing “their patriotic best for Britain”. Perhaps a touch hyperbolic.
Still, it should at least provide wayward husbands with a new excuse. “What time do you call this? You’re stinking drunk.”
“Drunk? How dare you. I’ve been doing my breast for bitten.” At five o’clock the Prime Minister held what he announced would be the last of the daily news conferences. This time, he sounded a little more cautious. Not as cautious, though, as the two men standing either side of him: Prof Chris Whitty (Chief Medical Officer) and Sir Patrick Vallance (Chief Scientific Adviser). Prof Whitty was unmistakably wary. The virus, he warned viewers, would be around “for a very long time” – and if the public think “this is all fine now, it’s gone away, and start behaving in ways they would have before the virus, then we will get an uptick [in cases], for sure.”
Mr Johnson insisted that he “couldn’t have been clearer” that “we must be cautious”. Moments later, however, he was blaring that people “need to go out and enjoy themselves… I want to see bustle, I want to see activity!”
Then, as if suddenly remembering the two men either side of him, he hastily urged the nation not to “overdo it… Can’t have great writhing scenes in the beer gardens…”
The message is clear. Bustle carefully. Writhe responsibly.