Bold Boris sees off the doom-mongers
THE THREAT of an independent Scotland and Wales – or a “united Ireland” – has hung over the heads of many a British prime minister. Just remember the ill-concealed glee of then PM David Cameron when he revealed he’d won the Scottish referendum in 2014 and the Monarch had “purred down the line” on hearing the news.
As we go into a New Year, by a bizarre twist of fate the level of devolved government and administration could prove to be a key building block in Boris Johnson’s crucial work in restoring his popularity and rebuilding his premiership.
For once, he has stared down the naysayers, gloom merchants and doom mongers who had appeared to hold him in a vice like grip affixed to an eternal policy of tougher measures, restrictions and circuit breakers.
Having played the role of Scrooge in 2020, Boris became the toast of the New Year as he overruled cautious committees and declared it was party time – at least across England.
And therein lies the key. Dreary, Left-wing administrations in Scotland and Wales decided – as all such governments down the years have – that the State knows best and the people were to be effectively locked up again.
As we go into the first week of the new year ask yourself this: last Friday, would you rather have been incarcerated in Cardiff, exiled in Edinburgh, bolted down in Belfast – or on the loose in London or partying in Preston?
Don’t get me wrong, life under bungling Boris has been anything but a bed of (English) roses. So many in England, and across the whole of the UK, opted to follow the rules in 2020 and didn’t meet up with loved ones in the flesh.
Instead they spent that Christmas waving at them from the bottom of the garden or even “touching” hands through windows. In too many cases, that was to be the final contact for some families.
Then picture after picture of “parties” in and around Number 10 swiftly fuelled the flames of bitter resentment.
But in Mark Drakeford and Nicola Sturgeon, the respective leaders of Wales and Scotland, Johnson has been handed a gift that just keeps on giving.
All the devolved governments, including in Northern Ireland, have ordered pubs to return to table service only and bring back the rule of six.
In Scotland, chippy Ms Sturgeon and her SNP cancelled the worldfamous Hogmanay celebrations in Edinburgh.
Never one to miss a chance to play the victim card, she has turned her Covid briefings into funereal affairs
with brazen hostility towards Westminster. However, the Scottish First Minister seems like Machiavelli when compared to the very embodiment of Puritanical censorship and control that is her Welsh counterpart, Mark Drakeford.
HIS POLICIES to tackle Covid have included allowing pubs to open, but without the sale of alcohol. Stores were ordered to cordon off, or wrap in giant sheets of plastic, nonessential goods. This meant in the snow and floods of winter, it was illegal to buy wellies or coats for you or your children, but you could buy bananas and cheese.
This Jeremy Corbyn acolyte also excelled himself with the truly ludicrous
policy of banning travel to work without reasonable justification, but allowing trips to the pub or supermarket. It’s worth noting this underscores one of the great political truths of all time: wherever the Left get a taste of power, they always seek to assume overbearing control.
Last week millions were held told to stay at home in the devolved countries – and were forced to watch from the other side of Hadrian’s Wall, the Severn Bridge or the Irish Sea, as families in England got together and said farewell to a blisteringly tough year while welcoming in a new one.
If Boris got this right – and it’s hard to imagine anyone will be studying possible future infection figures more closely – it will be the perfect tonic to the self-inflicted hangover of the preceding few months.