Two years ago, during the first Covid lockdown, Boris Johnson came face to face with a reality which until that moment he had seemed reluctant to acknowledge: the unwelcome truth that he was not the all-powerful prime minister of the whole UK. Because health policy is a devolved matter, on Covid he was prime minister of England alone.
To be an effective leader, therefore, he would have to go against his instincts and cooperate. Predictably, Johnson proved to be not very good at cooperating, and as a result effectiveness suffered. The imposition and then the easing of Covid restrictions around the UK became ever-more confused and politically driven. A global health problem became entangled with Johnson’s denialism, with the narcissism of small differences between the governments, and with his increasingly chaotic management of the Tory party at Westminster. In short, Johnson himself became part of the problem of fighting Covid.
