The arrogance of Boris and Rishi’s failed isolation dodge

It’s hard to break into the global top ten of insufferably arrogant political acts. You need to do something really memorable — something to match Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection, assembled while her husband presided over an increasingly impoverished country. Or the Soviet regime’s creation of special reserved ‘ZiL lanes’ in Moscow to speed government high-ups through the rush hour traffic.

But Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak may well have just managed it. The pair decided to use a ‘pilot scheme’ to exempt themselves from a requirement to self-isolate after coming into close contact with a Covid carrier (the health secretary). Fortunately, someone persuaded them of the folly of that approach and so they have U-turned, but the very fact that they ever considered it an appropriate step should set alarm bells ringing across the Tory high command.

At the very moment that millions of us are either living in dread of getting pinged or have just had it happen — and therefore dutifully disrupted our own lives by isolating — news came of the special get-out clause for the PM and Chancellor.