It took just two-and-a-half hours for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to demonstrate the contempt he feels for us.
The clock started with a statement from a Downing Street spokesperson on Sunday: ‘’The Prime Minister and Chancellor have been contacted by NHS Test and Trace as contacts of someone who has tested positive for Covid.
“They will be participating in the daily contact testing pilot to allow them to continue to work from Downing Street.
“They will be conducting only essential government business during this period.’’
‘Screeching U-turn’
It was stopped by a screeching U-turn, after 157 minutes of furious backlash at the UK government’s continued ‘’do as I say, not as I do’’ approach to the health crisis.
The next statement from Downing St might as well have read ‘’disregard previous statement’’.
The Prime Minister changed his mind and will now follow the same rules as the rest of us, which is awfy good of him.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the stench of implausibility that surrounds this mess: that two of the most powerful people in the country were lucky enough to get picked for a pilot scheme where participants are supposedly chosen at random.
Let’s ignore the Prime Minister’s video statement, where he pretended he had decided to self-isolate because it was the right thing to do.
Sunday’s shenanigans tell us everything we need to know about the UK government. Namely, that Boris Johnson is a chancer.
Self-interest is and has always been his driving force.
Is anybody really surprised that he looked for a loophole to avoid the rules and regulations that ordinary folk must abide by?
This was an avoidable error by the UK government. Among the army of spin doctors and focus-group wizards, somebody should have spotted the storm before it reached land.
How did they not realise that this would be seen as yet another example of there being one rule for them and another for the rest of us?
That question bestows qualities upon Boris Johnson that he has shown no sign of possessing.
The simple answer is usually the correct one. Boris Johnson wasn’t thinking about how the public would feel.
He didn’t consider the wider implications of a leader being seen to slither away from one of the few rules that remain in place. He was only thinking about himself.
‘Sacked twice for lying’
The test for political leaders is usually whether they put country before party. Boris Johnson has never met that test because his priority has always been his own interests.
This is a man who has been sacked twice for lying and who refuses to disclose how many children he has fathered.
He’s not exactly the poster boy for doing the right thing.
Boris Johnson didn’t just fail to read the room, he threw a grenade in the window and laughed while it burned.
I have friends who have had to self-isolate multiple times and have suffered financially in the process.
I know of people who were looking forward to the respite of a staycation after a terrible year, only for their plans to be upended at the last minute after being told to self-isolate.
Kids have missed school, parents have had to take time off work and struggling businesses have suffered enormously.
When you are told that you have been in contact with somebody who has tested positive, staying home requires a greater dose of civic duty than lockdown or mask-wearing.
You feel fine, your tests have all come back negative but still you follow the rules and stay home until your period of isolation ends.
You can’t choose whether to opt-in to a VIP testing pilot that would allow you to go about your business as normal.
Labour leader Keir Starmer summed it up perfectly.
He said the Prime Minister and Chancellor were like ‘’bank robbers who got caught and are now offering the money back’’.
The fact that Boris Johnson will now be in isolation for England’s long-awaited ‘Freedom Day’ is almost poetic.
He would have loved nothing more than to be front and centre. He could have given a Churchill-lite speech, full of bravado and self-congratulation. He might have even brushed his hair.
Instead, he is stuck indoors and unable to hear the applause that he craves so much.
If his freedom experiment pays off, it will surely be in spite of him rather than because of him.
‘Boris Johnson will blame everybody but himself’
Cases continue to rise across England and with this latest example of prime ministerial arrogance, it may be that people are less willing to self-isolate when asked to do so.
If that happens, Boris Johnson will blame everybody but himself.
This U-turn shows that our Prime Minister never intentionally does the right thing, only what is politically and personally convenient.
Here, he pushed the boundaries to see what he could get away with and it backfired.
But we would be foolish to believe that this period of self-isolation might encourage some self-reflection from our sleekit Prime Minister.
