It has faced unparalleled troubles but this government cannot point to a single significant achievement in the past 12 months

Editorial: From the timing of lockdowns to the two fiascos over free school meals, the government just seems very bad at governing, and Tory backbenchers are rightly growing restive

(The Independent)

Few governments in recent times have managed to lose their vitality as rapidly as this one. Not quite a year after the general election that delivered an enviable working majority of 87 in the Commons, it is already having to have a relaunch. Or, rather, it isn’t having a relaunch because the prime minister is self-isolating – again – as a precaution against Covid.

Even if, as Boris Johnson bullishly claims, the episode stands as an outstanding success for the test and trace app, and even though he himself is “bursting with antibodies”, there remain questions about how Covid-secure Downing Street really is. To have to self-isolate once may be regarded a misfortune, but twice…?

The photograph of Mr Johnson with his backbench friend, without a mask and apparently less than two metres apart, plus the evidence that five other Tory MPs at the meeting are also now in self-isolation, suggests that the “hands, face, space” protocols may not have been rigidly adhered to. Like everything else that has befallen them in recent months, most dramatically the departure of Mr Johnson’s two most senior advisers, this adds to the impression that the government is gaffe-prone, if not actually incompetent.