Boris Johnson’s problems are piling up

This time last year, Boris Johnson and his team were making plans to ‘move on’ from the pandemic. He had been elected thanks to Brexit, then had to handle the Covid disaster, but he didn’t want either to define his government. ‘We have an indecent amount of great stuff to get into as soon as this ends,’ he’d tell supporters privately. But this claim had two problems. First, there would be no end to the Covid drama. Second, the ‘great stuff`’ he intended to do was often a mystery even to his own government.

For a while, the success of the vaccine procurement kept his poll ratings high. There was a hope that Britain would be the first country to jab its way back to normality. Instead, the rollout slowed and the UK has now been overtaken by France in the vaccination league table. Rows over vaccine passports, self-isolation and expensive tests for holidays have dampened the public mood.