Questions and Answers

So Boris is back. Recovered from Covid, welcomed little Wilfred into the world, and now he can get back to battling the pandemic. And there is a change straight away. We’ve missed the frantic search for verbal colouring, to make dreary politics exciting, as Boris picks on the spicy image or memorable phrase to light up what he has to say. Whether or not that is necessary or appropriate is another matter. And the other thing that struck me, going through the transcript of the briefing he ran on Thursday April 30th, is how seldom he answers a question. He’s not a good listener at the best of times (my poem Mileage-gate in SONNETS identifies a crucial faux pas at this event) and in his return to action people were very happy to give him an easy ride, so he wasn’t fending off critical attacks. But even so. One Cabinet source passionately asserted this week that Boris had been seriously changed by his experience of the virus. A reporter asked him to elaborate bu no - grateful to the NHS, we keep fighting the virus, our vigour remains unabated. Pesto asked him what lessons he had learned - lots of potential there for honest analysis. Lots of lessons, learning lessons all the time…was he going to actually offer an example? No, of course he wasn’t. If you’ve got the appetite for more of this in detail, there’s my poem “Press Conference” in Poems from the News.