Can Boris Johnson solve the Tory lockdown split?

The great Pixar animated film ‘Monsters, Inc.’ tells the story of Sulley, a fluffy-haired, broad-shouldered and rather cuddly monster who creates energy by scaring children in their beds but then discovers that vastly more energy can be generated by making them laugh instead.

I offer this not as a rival to Boris Johnson’s new plan to make wind energy power the whole of Britain by ‘harvesting the gusts’, but because it has lately seemed to many observers that the Prime Minister has been on a reverse journey to that undertaken by Sulley.

The tousled, broad-shouldered Boris started his Tory leadership generating political energy by means of cheering us all up but then found his administration relying on tactics every bit as chilling as those used on the scare floors of Monsters Incorporated: Stay home, save lives; hands, face, space; Rule of Six; Curfews; Lockdowns; Don’t kill granny.

In his party conference speech today, Boris was at pains to tell us this is just a temporary phase and that he yearns for and will have delivered by this time next year the full return of ‘our pubs, our clubs, our football, our theatre and all the gossipy gregariousness and love of human contact that drives the creativity of our economy’.