BUCK UP BORIS! we need your bounce back

His enemies smell blood. Even friends whisper there’s no captain at the bridge. Now the PM’s biographer urges him...

IT PAINS me to say this but Boris Johnson, exhausted and looking increasingly forlorn, appears to have a few short weeks to salvage his reputation and save his Government from ridicule. Still recovering from his near- death experience with Covid-19, the Prime Minister faces unprecedented obstacles to prevent Britain slipping into a deep recession.

With so many cards stacked against him, our sallow-faced and hollow-eyed leader has squandered much of the goodwill he accumulated after his landslide Election victory in December.

Even his friends whisper that there is no captain on the bridge steering the ship. According to a YouGov poll, Johnson’s handling of the virus is rated as the worst of all world leaders.

Many will discount the criticism as unfair. Contrary to predictions of doom from the Left, the NHS has performed brilliantly. Eight million workers have been protected by the Chancellor’s £80 billion furlough package. Most of the country is becoming free of Covid. Despite our economy shrinking by 20 per cent in April, it still ticks over.

Johnson’s misfortune is that those achievements have been drowned out by the impression of defeat. Hampered by Downing Street’s cack-handed communications, Johnson is mischievously blamed for orchestrating a shambles.

Some believe his seeming impassivity, sporadic public appearances and blustering press conferences are proof he’s still suffering the after-effects of Covid, combined with sleepless nights with a six-week-old baby.

Some of his harshest critics have boldly stated that if he had still been married to Marina, his long-suffering ex-wife ‘who was unafraid to dispense home truths’, Johnson’s life would be more stable than with a fiancee 23 years his junior.

Such censure, though, ignores Boris’s strength. Over the years, he has successfully compartmentalised his private and public lives. And since there is no obvious leading Tory who might put themselves forward as an alternative Prime Minister, his supporters are convinced that not all is lost.

JUST as his hero Winston Churchill led Britain out of its Darkest Hour in 1940, Johnson needs to summon the courage, ideas and energy to enthuse the nation with a blueprint that will stop us coming out of lockdown in tatters.

He also needs to fire failing Ministers – of which there are several – and Civil Service time-servers on whom he has mistakenly relied.

The fact is he has little time. No later than July 1, just 18 days away, Johnson needs to address Parliament and then the nation on TV to give the country confidence to believe that his Government machine is firing on all cylinders.

We all need to be reassured that we can rely on the Prime Minister to restore normality as quickly as possible.

Johnson’s priorities must be to revive the economy; reopen all schools; launch a major resurgence of Britain’s cultural institutions such as cinemas, museums, concert halls and theatres; encourage pubs and restaurants to reopen; and finally, to rebuild his Government with inspiring and gifted politicians.

It is exactly five weeks ago that Johnson lost his halo. His disastrous TV address changing the slogan from ‘ Stay Home’ to ‘ Stay Alert’ was confusing, vague and greeted by widespread irritation. Accused of confusing the message, Johnson lost a huge amount of public goodwill.

Until then, many had tolerated the failure to provide NHS staff with sufficient protective gowns, for example, blaming the global shortage. Many also understood the crisis in privately owned care homes was not politicians’ fault.

But Johnson’s reputation took a second battering. His apparently flippant dismissal of the allegations against Dominic Cummings for breaking the spirit of the lockdown was a self-inflicted disaster that exposed a gross misunderstanding of the national mood.

In the past, he had listened to the advice of loyal friends outside the Downing Street bunker. Suddenly, to avoid criticism, he is shunning their calls.

In explaining his plan to relax the l ockdown, the PM needed senior civil servants to deliver a clear, common-sense scheme. But they failed.

In truth, Johnson has been let down by Whitehall’s perennial bunglers. Then he refused to identify and remove the guilty parties.

By character, Johnson has an aversion to confrontation. To date, he has accepted all the scientists’ advice. That must end.

We now know that their advice until mid-March was muddled or even wrong. We also know that the scientists now disagree on the best course forward.

Johnson, in his DNA a libertarian and free-marketeer, must follow his instincts and unshackle himself from the scientists’ chains. He should gamble that the risk of a few extra deaths is outweighed by the urgent need to reopen the country.

Admittedly, confrontation often ends in bloodshed but this is the only way for Johnson to restore his credibility. Simultaneously, he must change his way of governing. Until now, he has delegated most critical decisions to Ministers. Unwisely, he allowed Home Secretary Priti Patel to announce a 14-day quarantine on travellers entering the UK – something that is unenforceable and has been widely ridiculed. Similarly, he relied on Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, but he has blundered embarrassingly over the reopening of schools.

And, most alarmingly, he has depended on Health Secretary Matt Hancock to mastermind the ‘war’ against Covid. It is shocking that Britain is third in the world death league from the virus despite only having the 21st largest population.

The public has lost trust in Hancock, of whom retired Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption wrote last week: ‘ With his hectoring manner, authoritarian assumptions and snarling threats, [ he] has resembled nothing so much as the petulant headmaster of a thirdrate school.’

It’s not just ministerial incompetence. No 10 is staffed by people of mixed ability. At its heart is Sir Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary. Having trained in the Home Office, his specialism is security, which means he’s been poorly equipped to mobilise the Whitehall machine to tackle Covid.

He also neglected to point out to Johnson the dysfunctional performance of senior officials in Public Health England, the Department of Health and hospital trusts.

Johnson should ignore his benign instincts and fire Sir Mark, replacing him with a thrusting agent of change. At the same time, he should

replace the senior civil servants at health, education and defence. All have failed to deliver.

Whitehall needs to be revolutionised to get Britain back on its feet.

A litmus test of whether the medicine is working will be when we hear the screams of protest by the Luddite civil service trade unions.

Just three months ago, pre-Covid, the Johnson Government’s first Budget spelled out an exciting One Nation vision. Chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled a visionary £30 billion plan to rebuild our infrastructure and finance a huge expansion to reboot Britain. The Government should double that investment. Ministers must learn that we overrelied on the power of globalisation and on China. Of course, that will need an army of experts – so, in the short term, Britain should recruit from around the world.

Spending money to rebuild is easy compared to the parallel task of winning the political battle.

Covid aside, Boris Johnson is under attack by those in denial that the Tories won a landslide Election victory just six months ago and who want to reverse Brexit. Defeating those enemies requires courage and conviction. No one doubts that Johnson had both these qualities before his illness, but now there are worrying signs he is lacking the energy to fight simultaneously on many fronts.

Indeed, his enemies smell blood. Militant teachers have seized the upper hand and shown that their selfish interests are more important than the education of the nation’s children. Anarchist mobs have hijacked the Black Lives Matter protests. Michel Barnier, the EU’s Brexit negotiator, thinks he can bully Britain over our exit deal. The BBC has become a mouthpiece for anti-Tory criticism. Wales, run by Labour, and the Nationalist government in Scotland, are defiantly following different policies from those pursued in London.

Boris Johnson, an acute student of history, will recall he has experienced a similar hiatus. Six months into his time as London Mayor, in 2008, his administration was mired in chaos. Key appointments were exposed as disastrous. After their swift dismissal, the arrival of a new chief of staff, Simon Milton, transformed Johnson’s mayoralty.

Now, to up his game, it’s not City Hall that Johnson must rejuvenate, but his Cabinet and Downing Street team.

On a personal level, too, Johnson needs to change gear. He must show he is in charge. He must offer a vision and a big strategy.

Above all, it is imperative that the man who has been seen for years as a great communicator actually communicates better.

At least, for the present, he knows that whatever his critics – and they are growing in number daily – throw at him, he is the only politician with the capacity to unify and lead Britain. But even that certainty can quickly disappear.