Denial is not a strategy, Prime Minister

The psychodrama in No. 10 is badly timed. The government has used emergency powers to ban meetings, church services and even family visits. A million jobs have gone since the first lockdown, with at least a million more to follow when the furlough money runs out. Children’s education was so badly set back by school closures that there are calls to cancel summer exams because pupils won’t be ready. Millions are facing financial ruin. A country looks to its Prime Minister for leadership.

Yet the big announcement, made on the eve of the Brexit deal Boris Johnson was elected to deliver, is that he will ban the sale of new petrol cars by the end of the decade and hybrids five years later. Cheer up, he tells voters in the north looking at financial ruin; come 2030 you’ll be installing green boilers and making electric car batteries. As Johnson knows, the number of ‘green jobs’ created by 2030 will be dwarfed by the jobs lost this year and next, but talking about the end of the decade is certainly an easier subject.