ground control to major dom
This government is inept. There, I’ve said it. Like kicking a dog or taking candy from a baby, no-one likes a smart Alec but I can hold my tongue no longer. Thankfully, you don’t have to take it just from me and the usual-suspects of Keir Starmer and Angela Rayner, as there’s a whole raft of Tory backbenchers, supporters and right-wing media pundits, from Piers Morgan to the FT, queuing up to voice their own similarly withering opinions.
‘Where’s Boris?’ asked last week’s Spectator, the very same magazine the prime minister once controlled and edited. Featuring a comical front cover of a distant blond dot aboard a tiny rudderless boat adrift on a stormy sea, the overt criticism of Johnson’s lack of leadership was all too apparent. But on the off chance that it passed the readership by, its leader column went on to ponder “The question is whether he can become a proper leader with a sense of direction and purpose?”
In recent months, all too often the government has over-promised and under-delivered. Policies, always announced to tremendous fanfare and hyperbole, have had to be swiftly retracted, fundamentally changed or abandoned following the impact of entirely predictable problems, amongst them the exam, contact tracing, no-deal Brexit and Irish border debacles. Perhaps he was merely trying to cheers us all up but did anyone actually believe the PM’s £100bn ‘Operation Moonshot’ promise of ten million twenty-minute tests? Notwithstanding The Dom’s recently installed Star Trek mission-control Whitehall ‘big data’ centre where his self-styled ‘weirdos and misfits’ analyse our every move in real time, the Tories’ ineptitude is all too obvious but the question I’m keen to raise is does it matter, do voters care?
The charge of incompetence has certainly brought down both premiers and governments in recent times, from Ted Heath and Jim Callaghan in the seventies, to Gordon Brown and Theresa May in the noughties. Consequently, you’d be forgiven for thinking the demand for a certain level of ability to be a powerful weapon for change within our troubled times, but you’d be wrong. For all the criticism, the situation remains surprisingly positive for Boris and the Conservatives remain well ahead in the polls, only a smidgen down on their 2019 landslide voting victory. Competence no longer appears an essential commodity and goes some way to explaining why those with an obvious lack of it stubbornly remain in situ.
Our first truly populist government are strangely resilient and shielded from their own actions but this shouldn’t surprise anyone as the whole populist movement, in reality, avoids determining exactly how a country and its society should be ruled, other than by the most photogenic promising to do everything the majority demands. Expressing contempt for the current incumbents achieves precious little as, in the end, the joke’s on us all. Having said that, a period of quiet reflection, diligent planning and studious, old-fashioned competence wouldn’t go amiss.
