A second wave of the virus looks as if it could be on the way, and the government’s chosen cure, “test and trace,” has failed.  The economy is plunging, unemployment set to soar.  The UK’s international reputation in tatters.   Taken individually, certainly together, this is disaster.

Disaster it may be, unpredictable it was not.  Let me remind you of Max Hastin’s words, taken from an article in The Guardian headed “I was Boris Johnson’s boss: he is utterly unfit to be prime minister.” He wrote: “he is unfit for national office, because it seems he cares for no interest save his own fame and gratification…. We can’t predict what a Johnson government will do, because its prospective leader has not got around to thinking about this. But his premiership will almost certainly reveal a contempt for rules, precedent, order and stability…. Dignity still matters in public office, and Johnson will never have it. Yet his graver vice is cowardice, reflected in a willingness to tell any audience, whatever he thinks most likely to please, heedless of the inevitability of its contradiction an hour later.”

How long will this débâcle last and what damage will it do ?  Hastings had something to say on that, too: “the Johnson premiership could survive for three or four years, shambling from one embarrassment and debacle to another, of which Brexit may prove the least…. For many of us, his elevation will signal Britain’s abandonment of any claim to be a serious country. It can be claimed that few people realised what a poor prime minister Theresa May would prove until they saw her in Downing Street. With Boris, however, what you see now is almost assuredly what we shall get from him as ruler of Britain.”