Boris Johnson had his sorrowful face on, the one where his lower jaw hangs open like a drawbridge and the eyes droop with a cuckold’s self-pity.
Oh goodie. That could only mean one thing. The Prime Minister can create more regulations and nannyish constraints for his and his team, as well as make them break even more.
Boris declared that he would be moving us all to Plan B. Omicron cases were on the march.
We are now instructed to return home whenever possible, starting Monday. Or as civil servants refer to it these days: ‘business as usual’.
We were back in the Downing Street briefing room, that same one where the PM’s former press secretary Allegra Strat-ton was filmed making light of lockdown restrictions and giggling coquettishly.
Poor Allegra. Just a couple of hours before, she’d announced a blubbery resignation over the incident.
Boris said it was a ‘sad day for her’ and she would be ‘missed’. Miss Stratton could find his remarks quite insignificant after she took the blame for the other aides.
Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of Britain, held a press conferment at Downing Street Wednesday evening in response to rising Omicron cases in Britain
Stratton made a statement from North London to reporters on Wednesday and announced that she would hand her resignation over to the Prime Minister
How did people watching at home feel as he yanked away our liberties once again, knowing what we do of Downing Street’s ‘cheese and wine’ soirees? You would be miffed.
Certainly Boris urging everyone to ‘play your part’ will have had a few throwing the Rich Teas at the television.
It’s even not clear the PM will get his own party to swallow these plans. Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary to the Commons was doing a great job of selling this plan to Tory backbenchers.
‘Can he give me any reason at all why I shouldn’t tell my constituents to treat these rules in exactly the same way that Number 10 Downing Street treated last year’s rules?’ pondered Philip Davies (Con, Shipley). He wasn’t the only one.
Boris experienced a similar muted taste at PMQs, and he was subject to predictable monstering.
Even the welcoming cheers that greeted him upon his arrival seemed contrived. It was like watching a comedy on TV. This is the best kind of adulation.
To see the real mood of Tories, you only have to observe their facial expressions. The lips were narrowed and the arms tightened.
Die-hard football fans who’ve reluctantly stayed to witness another 5-0 drubbing to the bitter end.
Boris Johnson (right), Chris Whitty, Chief Medical Officer (left), and Patrick Vallance, Chief Scientific Adviser (right), as further Covid Measures were introduced by the Government
Staff laughed about an alleged party held at Number 10 during lockdown restrictions last December, according to a leaked Downing Street recording
There was something synthetic, too, about the Prime Minister’s apology for the footage of Stratton revealed the night before.
He, too, was ‘sickened and furious’ he said. He denied that any party was held, but he announced that Cabinet Secretary Simon Case would launch an investigation.
How confident should we feel about Case’s sleuthing skills? As memory serves, he was charged with hunting down the so-called Downing Street ‘chatty rat’ and unearthed precisely nothing. He’s possibly more Clouseau than Columbo.
Presented with such a plethora of attack lines, even Sir Keir Starmer couldn’t stuff this one up.
He blasted the PM six times about the party. Six times he sent Boris’s middle stump cartwheeling. It was like watching Rory Burns’s golden duck in the Ashes earlier that morning on repeat.
Labour’s benches delighted in seeing the PM squirm. Starmer’s new favourite autobot Wes Streeting, his setting stuck permanently on auto-slave, waved his arms and pumped his legs excitedly.
Omicron is feared to be responsible for 1,000 hospital admissions per day. The Prime Minister has now pushed the button regarding Plan B coronavirus curbs
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker had to tell him to slow down. Jess Phillips, Lab, Birmingham Yardley), made a few cheerio gestures. Angela Rayner, Deputy Leader of the Party, had a Bet Lynch-inspired hairdo.
Ian Blackford finally found respite when he climbed to his feet. Blackford’s stun gun oratory nullified the braying atmosphere.
He called upon Boris to stand down which didn’t produce the stir he might have hoped. Maybe because he repeats the request every month.
The real lemon in the wound came when the PM’s own backbencher, William Wragg (Con, Hazel Grove), angrily suggested the idea of Covid passports was a ‘diversionary tactic’ from the Camembert and claret hoo-haa.
The chamber was filled with gasps, and everyone inhaled. Mr Wragg’s arrow had been aimed directly at the PM’s heart. The bullet struck bullseye.