We don’t know how good Rishi Sunak is yet – but we know how authoritative he sounds and that is enough for now

It is far too late for persuasion now, we need further action and fast, writes Matthew Norman

The chancellor has impressed many with his press conferences (EPA)

With Jesus being a little hampered right now, what with all His churches shut, the bumper sticker question previously about the Saviour has a new subject: What Would Rishi Do?

Everyone knows what the astoundingly assured young chancellor has done to preserve jobs and give the economy a moderate chance of surviving the coronavirus-heavy months ahead.

But what would Rishi Sunak do were he prime minister? What would he already have done?

Judging by the monumental measures he has taken from No 11, it feels a fair guess he would have acted with proactive decisiveness in No 10.

An even safer guess is that he would not have had his actions (or inactions) influenced by Dominic Cummings.

The Sunday Times claims that in late February, Cummings was heard saying that the quest for “herd immunity” was justified on economic grounds regardless whether some older people died.

Downing Street strongly denies this, quite possibly with cause. But the instant I learned the government was pursuing an infection rate of 60 per cent, when no other country on the planet (let alone a liberal democracy) was contemplating any such social Darwinism, the reflex reaction for me was “Cummings”.

The blogger with the penchant for eccentric scientific theorising shouldn’t be anywhere near the levers of a power in times such as these.

It’s difficult to conceive any prime minister in history other than this one hiring him in the first place. But any who had, would have slung him out when he hired a eugenicist in accord with whatever doolally brand of chaos theory informs his thinking.

Yet Boris Johnson was apparently still listening to Cummings when he proselytised the race for herd immunity against a second wave of a disease epidemiologists still barely understand at all.

Since then, according to The Sunday Times, Cummings’s viral influence has waned – though not, amazingly enough, in a good way. When he saw projections of 250,000-500,000 deaths, he immediately performed a volte face.

This was the point at which, so it seems, Johnson shut out his his grungy svengali. He should have shut the schools, restaurants, pubs and most of the London Underground days before he did.

The results of this dithering will eventually be known. But the charts of infectivity growth show the recent rise here as the second steepest across the planet,.

What Johnson should have done a week ago is lock the country down. Not just London. The country.

Obviously, any definitive statement from anyone, let alone a medically untrained hack like me (or Johnson), demands sceptical reception. You don the metaphorical latex gloves to handle anything that hints at certainty.

Yet the PM’s continual U-turns, and the comparison between the carnage imminent here and the lack of it in south east Asia, looks like de facto confirmation that almost every trick has been missed.

If there is any window left to avoid Italy 2.0, it is narrow and closing fast. And while A&E consultants expect shortly be triaging between life and death, Johnson resembles a 1950s music hall act shellshocked by the realisation that TV’s arrival as a mass medium consigns him to irrelevance.

When he gently invites people to steer clear of pubs, they gather in pubs. Any credibility is swallowed by the gulf between the reality of the mannered jester and the Churchillian warlord dream.

The moment is just too big for a second rate stand up with a messiah complex. When natural authority is a priceless commodity, he runs dry.

It gushes, meanwhile, of his neophyte chancellor. Whenever Sunak speaks, people take notice. As others have noted, we still don’t know how good he really is. But we know how good he sounds – and when it is essential to persuade the public to behave sensibly, the projection of competence is virtually as crucial as the reality.

It is far too late for persuasion now. It is paramount that within hours, Johnson abandons the mannerly requests, and begins to command with the full power of emergency law.

If that means the forced quarantining of the irresponsible, and tanks ringing the M25 and other major cities and towns… Whatever it takes to maximise the chances of postponing armageddon until the arrival of the masks, protective suits and ventilators, which should have been ordered in January, must be done.

Such words don’t come naturally to a lifelong liberal leftie to whom, until days ago, martial law in peacetime was the province of Jimmy Goldsmith and other plutocratic coup-fantasists of that hideous ilk.

Yet where we are is petrifying, and where we’re heading – regardless of whatever steps are taken – is unimaginably worse. But unless those steps are immediate, and fall under the header of the benignly fascistic, you need only glance at Bergamo for a reliable guide.

Until now, the economy’s survival has clearly been prioritised over the survival of human beings. Whether that was unintended, it is fact.

When this first wave is over, we will have time and space to reflect before the anticipated second next winter. Analyses between the speed and effectiveness of response here and and other nations will be made. Death rates will be compared.

If our statistics are notably more gruesome than elsewhere, all Johnson’s bumbling cheeriness and the propagandising of his apparent sponsors in the reactionary press may not save him.

The assumption about what Rishi would have done could make him the youngest prime minister since William Pitt.