Brian Monteith: Boris Johnson is back to lead while Nicola Sturgeon is ‘having a conversation with herself’

Nobody can envy Boris Johnson’s enormous challenge, writes Brian Monteith.

Nobody can envy Boris Johnson’s enormous challenge, writes Brian Monteith. (via Getty Images)

Today is B-Day; Boris Johnson is back in harness, thank God (and the NHS) for saving Boris.


I know there are some partisan curmudgeons who would rather he had gone to meet his maker, but we can dismiss them for the uncaring inhumane hypocrites they are; for the reason they feel the way they do is they believe ‘HIM’ to be uncaring…

I do not believe the Government is in stasis or there has been any real sort of hiatus; the rest of the Cabinet have had their jobs to do and they have got on with it. Some, like Dominic Raab, have clearly improved as they got used to the unreal nature of appearing on a daily basis to announce little more than the number of deaths while impersonating the target at a fairground coconut shy where members of the media seek immortality by knocking him to the ground.

The low point was reached when BBC Health correspondent Hugh Pym asked Chancellor Rishi Sunak if he was “ashamed” about government failures to obtain the PPE that it had promised.

Pray tell me what the answer might have added to the sum of licence payers’ knowledge about the issue at hand of dealing with the pandemic’s mortal threat.

Does Pym feel ashamed working for the organisation that knew all about Jimmy Saville’s behaviour, allowed it to continue and then sought to cover it up when its own journalists brought it to their attention? Would that have been an irrelevant and disrespectful reply? Why of course, but no more so than Pym’s appalling attempt at providing what should be the benchmark of journalistic standards.

Following such base behaviour the Prime Minister shall today no doubt be immediately subject to all manner of emotive and irrelevant interrogation, sometimes partisan, sometimes just demeaning hearsay and gossip.

Demeaning, that is, to the journalists who ask such guff. It is at times like these, when the decisions now weighing heavily on the Prime Minister’s broad shoulders that matter to us all, we can see how ridiculous and spurious was the innuendo about his marriages, liaisons and progeny during the general election campaign. What matters is his ability to make good judgement calls, to show leadership in announcing them and convincing us to respect that he has made best use of the information at his command without political prejudice so we should follow his advice.

I believe Prime Minister Johnson has delivered on that requirement thus far.

Instead of holding to his fairly liberal interpretation of Conservative articles of faith (he has never ever been a right wing nut-job) he has in fact suspended (not abandoned) any pretence of financial prudence and adopted economic policies (albeit temporarily) more easily identified with Corbynism on Meth.

That is not the mark of a man who puts his own party before the interests of the British people, or for that matter ideology before humanity.

North of the border

I wish I could say the same of our First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, and for a moment this week when she announced her 25-page strategy for coming out of the lockdown I thought I would have to eat my rather extensive collection of headgear.

The First Minister invited us to have an adult conversation about how we might return to some sort of normality, even though it would undoubtedly be normality, but not as we know it.

Unfortunately, like so much else she says, it was designed to look in control of our situation and be ahead of the rest of the UK (if not the rest of the world). Coming from a politician who in the same breath of boasting about her commitment to openness and transparency has been prepared to argue for halting jury trials (requiring an embarrassing U-turn) and doubled the response time to Freedom of Information requests (another “World first” for Scotland) the reek of hypocrisy is rank. The offer of a “conversation” was devoid of sincerity and thus meaningless, being as it was just a jumble of words taken from the UK Government’s own guidance but reordered to seem different.

There was no timeline for us to discuss, no firm proposals to applaud or challenge, just maybes and possibilities supported by flying buttresses of caveats from every angle possible.

Different approach

Clearly the First Minister is still having a conversation with herself, so why trouble us with such imprecise suggestions?

Surely not so she might look good and be well thought of by those journalists who are gasping for an articulate opposition? (hence Keir Starmer may yet present a bigger threat to Sturgeon’s media adulation than the Prime Minister with an eighty seat majority).

In yet more dog-whistling to her most ravenous supporters the First Minister has made much of Scotland being able to come out of lockdown differently from the rest of the UK (for which read England, and only England).

But why should there be varying approaches between different “nations” in the UK?

Is Coldstream peculiarly different from Cornhill-on-Tweed only one mile away in England? There are of course differences in how Coronavirus impacts upon us – but it is no respecter of legal jurisdictions or imaginary borders. Glasgow will have more in common with Liverpool and Inverness with Lancaster – while London as the World’s capital has more in common with New York than anywhere in the UK.

As a highly interdependent service-orientated, cultural and education-led economy Edinburgh is especially vulnerable from being treated differently from the rest of the UK.

The real differences are between the urban and rural, the old and the young, those with existing illnesses and without. These are the differences our Prime Minister should take account of while ignoring proposed regional variations because the minstrels of devolution and nationalism wish to please their audiences.

Instead the UK Government must make what it can of following the science while recognising there is no scientific consensus. Why, we even learned this week that smokers may have a better survival rate. Does that mean Boris should say let’s take up the fags?

No, he has to distil the balance between the health and economic risks and show a large degree of courage. As Captain James Cook said about leadership, “The man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the crowd”.

Will Boris turn his back on the baying broadcasters who routinely use hindsight and false international comparisons to belittle him?

Nobody can envy this enormous challenge.

Brian Monteith is Editor of ThinkScotland.org

This article previously stated “BBC Health correspondent Hugh Pym asked Chancellor Rishi Sunak if he was ‘ashamed’ about the number of health worker deaths” but has been edited as the question was actually about the government’s efforts to obtain PPE.