Johnson and von der Leyen: the bad and the ugly, with no good in sight

It’s wonderful to see Boris Johnson rising to the challenge of new Covid variants by imposing far stricter regulations on entry to the UK (as brilliantly described by that superb journalist, Marina Hyde). 

I know there are quibblers out there who argue that, as he’s been talking about it since early January, it’s a tad overdue. I say late’s always better than never. And to those (like Marina Hyde) who say it should have happened not this January but last, when it could really have prevented the virus turning up, I say “let’s just be grateful that he’s thinking about these things now. After all, he doesn't often show much evidence of thought, so let’s appreciate it when he comes up with some.”

Boris Johnson trying out an  interesting new experience:
thinking about solutions to problems

That being said, I do think that as well as the regulations and the penalties for breaches (a 10-year gaol sentence, and death for a second offence, or did I make that second one up?), he ought also to publish the list of exemptions. After all, he’s good at exemptions. Look how he protected Dominic Cummings, despite his flagrant breaches of the rules, until he couldn’t defend him any more. In fact, he’s proved good at immunity, with the vaccination programme going well, but he showed ages ago that he does nothing better than impunity.

Those to whom the regulations won’t apply might include:

• His closest advisors and colleagues
• His wife. I’d like to add his children, but that would need him to identify who they were, something he seems to find difficult
• His donors
• His friends
• His friends’ friends
• A small circle of his closest colleagues. That would exclude anyone likely to plot against him, so the circle might be extremely small indeed.

Anyone on that list can fly in and out of the country, from wherever they like, and whenever they like.

I’m not quite sure whether former advisors should also appear on the list of people enjoying impunity, since that might mean making a concession to Dominic Cummings and while for a long time, in Johnson's book, Cummings could do no wrong, the rather peremptory way he was sacked suggests that poor Dominic may have rather lost the favour Johnson previously granted him. Among ex-advisors, Johnson will just have to pick and choose, separating the deserving (anyone who helped him advance his career) from the hopeless (those who may have injured his credibility). 

It would be good, at any rate, to have the list. It would help the police, too. After all, it can be quite embarrassing to have the police arrest someone for what in others would indeed be an offence, only to discover that he – or she, since it often is a she – enjoys special Johnson crony status and should not, therefore, be inconvenienced in any way by the hoy polloi (or hoy police).

The other encouraging development this week was the admission of error by Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission. That’s the commission that presided over dangerously slow processes to authorise vaccines against Covid, followed by late ordering of the doses for the whole of the EU, and made such a pig’s ear of negotiating the supply contracts that they’re not expecting delivery on time of even going what they did manage to order. A small error which, rather like many of Boris Johnson’s, are going to cost a number of people their lives, as they fall victim to a Covid infection which they might otherwise have avoided.

Ursula von der Leyen is sorry for a fiasco
As are a lot of other people around the EU

“We were late to authorise,” Von de Leyen announced. “We were too optimistic when it came to massive production, and perhaps too confident that what we ordered would actually be delivered on time. We need to ask ourselves why that is the case.”

It’s refreshing, a politician prepared to admit an error of judgement, and apologise for it. The whole of the EU is now way behind the curve on vaccination, so the apology hardly goes the whole way to making up for the Commission’s errors , but it does go some of the way.

Certainly, it would be a great step forward if other politicians in other places adopted the same approach. Hard to imagine, though. 

Trump admitting he got something wrong, rather than just blaming someone else? Not going to happen. 

Jeremy Corbyn accepting that the prime responsibility for losing the last election stops with him, and can’t simply be blamed on the Mainstream Media or the treachery of those inside the Labour Party who didn’t share his elevated view of himself? It would require a change of personality. That’s if he can be said to have had a personality in the first place.  

And what about Johnson? 100,000 dead on his watch. Oh, well, it could have happened to anyone. Admitting that, as Prime Minister, the responsibility for the fiasco rests with him? Never in his entitled universe could the idea dawn on him.

Von der Leyen could learn from him how to order supplies. He could learn from her how to behave when you get things wrong.