Never again will I do something this foolish – I refer to the work I wrote about yesterday. I was up late, and then started work before breakfast – not as early as I planned, but still before breakfast. Thank heavens for the time difference. I sent off what I had and was very plain about the confusion and gave some thoughts on bringing out key points. I did eventually get a very pleased response from the head writer, which may be politeness – they’re stuck with me – or it might be that I said some of the things that he wanted an external person to say to his team.
Anyway. The rest of the day’s work proved an unusual pleasant surprise as a book that I was very late with turned out to be a quick and easy edit and I finished two of the seven chapters.
The Turkish markets opened today, unhappily.
And I read a rather good article about Boris Johnson as clown, by Edward Docx who, regrettably, I suspect of being responsible (but in a responsible way) for his own Wikipedia entry.
We, however, have made our clown a real-world king. And from that moment on, we became a country in which there was only the mock heroic – a “world beating” country that would “strain every sinew” and give “cast-iron guarantees” while bungling its plans and breaking its promises. A country “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles” and act “as the supercharged champion” of X, Y, Z. A country on stilts – pretending that we had a test and trace system that was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. A country performing U-turns on the teetering unicycle of Johnsonian buffoonery – A-levels, school meals, foreign health workers and more. A country of tumbling catastrophes. Trampolining absurdities. Go to work. Don’t go to work. A country proroguing parliament illegally here, trying to break international law there. Paying its citizens to “eat out to help out” in the midst of a lethal pandemic. A country testing its eyesight in lockdown by driving to distant castles with infant and spouse during a travel ban. A country whose leadership stitched up the NHS in the morning and then clapped for them at night. A country opening schools for a single day, threatening to sue schools, shutting schools. A country on holiday during its own emergency meetings. A country locking down too late; opening up too early. A country sending its elderly to die in care homes. A country unwilling to feed its own children. A country spaffing £37bn up the wall one moment and refusing to pay its own nurses a decent salary the next. A country doing pretend magic tricks with the existence of its own borders – no, there won’t be a border in the sea; oh yes there will; oh no there won’t; it’s behind you …. A country of gimmicks and slapstick and hollow, honking horns.
Though it is certainly not Boris alone, it’s a common disease of politics these days. Let these western countries never mock Third World dictators in leopardskin or military uniform, we’re all players here.