Bojo saving his friend Dom’s skin
The French have a marvellous saying which - roughly translated – says that “Friends are a bit like . . . fish!
What our Gallic comrades are implying is that friends – like fish - might be welcome for an afternoon at the barbeque or for a few hours over the evening dinner table.
But if their presence becomes inadvertently extended. . . they can start to “go off”.
And I’m sure we’ve all got a “friend” in that category!
I know of one gentleman who is the perfect dinner host and the veritable ‘ life and soul’ of his own parties . . . until his hospitality meter runs out. Just before midnight, he disappears for a few minutes – only to return to his guests in full pyjamas, dressing gown and slippers.
And any guests who can’t take the hint, and remain after midnight, are never invited again!
The analogy with the French maxim gradually occurred to me at the weekend over a succession of negative headlines.
A friend we all know has ultimately overstayed his welcome and is
“going off” to the point of acute ripeness.
His name . . . is Mr Lockdown. We may not have welcomed him to our households with open arms – but we certainly did our best to accommodate him . . . and his peculiar anti- social ways.
The stopover that many of us expected to last a few weeks – and has stretched to a few months – has gradually gnawed away at our outer shell of tolerance and endurance.
And this weekend – in the bizarre form of a baldy geezer called Dominic Cummings – it finally broke through to our inner, sensitive core.
There was a time when Boris Johnson’s special adviser could have pedalled naked from London to Durham blowing bubbles out his behind - and barely raised an eyebrow.
But that time isn’t this time. Just as our patience is souring to impatience and our tether is within touching distance – Mr Cummings’ offhand disrespect for the rules everyone else has been respecting is instantly elevated from a slap in the face . . to a well placed boot in the national groin.
As I write, Mr Cummings is clinging to his “I acted responsibly and legally” justification.
Everything in the garden is rosy – and he’s sitting in the Downing Street rose garden with “no regrets.”
Meanwhile, Bojo is clinging to his “special advisor” like a petulant child to someone else’s favourite toy.
“Mr Cummings did what every parent would do . . .” said Boris at Downing Street on Sunday.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t in the press room to ask, “If every parent did what Mr Cummings did, where would your ‘ stay and home’ strategy be now, Prime Minister?”
I suppose the 262- mile London to Durham question is - “Who gives special advice to the special advisor?”. It appears no- one in Downing Street has had the wit – or perhaps even the warrant – to advise Dominic Cummings to put his hands up right away, apologise to his boss and the nation - and admit to a gross error of judgement in difficult personal circumstances. Although I dislike the man intensely - that would have done it for me. But Dominic Cummings insists he’s done nothing wrong - as if blessed with some kind of papal “infallibility.”
And Bojo waves public outrage away like a condescending constable, “Move along folks, nothing to see here . . .”.
And when you consider that one of these guys is running a country that’s lost almost 37,000 lives – and apparently, so is the other one! - is it any wonder that the public’s lack of confidence in the Covid battle has an “R” rate of transmission that’s going off the scale?
The Prime Minister’s prime responsibility should be saving lives – not saving the skin of an admittedly talented colleague and friend.
The country is looking for a road map out of strife and lockdown – but our front pages are full of the road map from Islington to Durham.
During that journey – Dominic Cummings’ role changed from political advisor to political distraction.
A proper leader would have dismissed him at best – or “reluctantly accepted” his resignation at worst.
As the death toll rises and the economy sinks . . . only history will decide if a proper leader was at our helm in the biggest storm of modern times.
Only history will decide if a proper leader was at our helm in the biggest storm of modern times