Last week he was the police, now Boris Johnson is dressing up as a worried statesman – but he’s fooling no one

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Boris Johnson gave a televised statement to update the public on the omicron variant and vaccine booster campaign. (Getty Images)

Yesterday, our embarrassing clown of a prime minister took off the hi-vis playsuit he so loves to be seen in, packed away last week’s police fancy-dress costume and tried to pass himself off as a statesman worried about omicron.

No doubt imagining that we have all been fooled into thinking that Boris Johnson, rather than the NHS, has been responsible for the relative success of the vaccine rollout, he has taken a leaf out of the Hancock 2020 playbook and set unattainable vaccination targets.

Given that there is no evidence anywhere that the omicron variant is more serious, as distinct from more transmissible, than its predecessors, this was all too obviously a desperate attempt to get us focusing on vaccination targets again rather than on his lies and hypocrisy.

Just how stupid does he think we all are?

David Maughan Brown

York

Better the Boris you know

A great many letters have recently expressed the hope that the prime minister would soon be gone and, whilst I agree with them, the alternative might be worse.

A government headed by any one of the present cabinet would be most divisive, given that they would have been ultimately, and undemocratically, chosen by the membership of the Conservative Party.

Michael Guest

Swaffham, Norfolk

Familiar untruths

It’s a sad fact, but whenever our prime minister speaks, my default setting is to assume it’s not true. I’m sure many others feel the same and, like me, ignore what he’s said and play the game of spotting what form of weasel words he has used to enable him at some time in the future to deny whatever it was he had just said.

It’s not new. It’s something he has done before when campaigning and even in parliament, particularly at PMQs. The latest was to offer everyone over 18 a booster by the end of the year, complete with the three-word mantra “Get Boosted Now”. That’s while knowing full well that not all over-18s are eligible. The target of a million jabs a day is a number we never even approached during the initial campaign, when NHS staff were not exhausted and demoralised by non-stop pressure.

No wonder his televised statement was prerecorded without anyone from Sage present who might have identified some of his shortcomings, or members of the media to ask awkward questions.

John Simpson

Ross-on-Wye

Be a contributor, not a burden

With regards to Jade Bremner’s article, we have many things that need to be funded properly in the NHS and social care, and free PCR tests for travel purposes isn’t one of them.

Comparing travel to sporting or other health-improving activities is spurious and disingenuous. Injuries are not a known choice for any sane person (it wouldn’t be an accident) but they are an acceptable consequence of being an active person.

Many people will be avoiding leisure travel in order not to risk their health and to protect the NHS. Business travellers have a necessary task and the cost and risks of travel should have been included in a risk assessment for the activity.

Business travel is expensive – time is money and even a simple one- or two-day trip could easily cost £2,000; some business people would charge multiples of that. In business you consider the risks (eg what if the country goes on the red list?) and decide if the risk is valid. I know a good few who are not doing these trips for exactly that reason.

Private travellers should do the same – and if you cannot afford the risk then you have to stay put. The NHS is busy enough and I for one do not wish my taxes to go towards paying for such frivolities.

I have lived abroad for work for about eight years in total and have missed several family funerals in that time, as well as dealing with serious illnesses at arm’s length – most were without Zoom or similar. Neither I nor the planet can afford this modern predilection for instant travel for any excuse. It’s expensive in many ways. If you left or they left the country of birth/residence for the opportunities the world has to offer, then accept the downsides as well as the upsides.

Be a contributor, not a burden is my suggestion. If you can afford the luxury of a holiday, then donate to a worthy UK cause instead. That I would applaud.

Michael Mann

Shrewsbury

Don’t tell me how to vote

I am writing to you from Oswestry in North Shropshire, a town unheard of by many before Owen Paterson’s resignation and the current political frenzy.

Over the last few days I have read many letters and opinion pieces telling me that I, as a Labour voter, “should” put my personal views aside and vote Liberal Democrat. The bookies have decided the Lib Dems are best placed to beat the Conservatives, despite the fact that Labour have got at least double the votes of the Liberal Democrats in general elections since the coalition.

The constituency is portrayed as a strange, out-of-touch sort of place, mainly agricultural, almost feudal in its conservative leanings. But it’s also a place of food banks, extremely long waits for ambulances, and chronically poor public transport – all matters which have arisen under the Conservatives and which, based on their years in government, a Liberal Democrat MP would do little to address.

In North Shropshire, as elsewhere, we need stronger public services and an MP who will properly represent the area. Please stop telling me who I “ought” to vote for.

Fiona Wood

Oswestry, Shropshire

Are ‘scroungers’ always the poor?

One of the enduring mantras of the Tory Party hard right is the need to come down hard on what they usually describe as “benefit scroungers” – that appears to include anyone in the unfortunate position of having to rely on state benefits simply to get by.

Consider the cruel decision by Boris Johnson’s government to withdraw the £20 universal credit uplift following the end of the initial pandemic assistance rollout. Remember also the decision to end free school meals for needy children over the school holidays last year, a decision thankfully reversed following his shaming by Marcus Rashford.

However, I see nothing coming from the same Tory hard right about applying this epithet to the habits of Boris Johnson himself. He gets others to pay for his and his family’s fairly exotic holidays and he taps rich party donors to pay for the horrendously expensive redecoration of his flat in Downing Street, the funding of which he was forced to repay. This is a man who has earned high salaries throughout his career, yet appears to believe that he is entitled to be funded by others for all aspects of his public life.

Why then does the epithet “scrounger” only apply to the poor? Presumably, privilege and a sense of entitlement saves Boris Johnson from the same insult.

Kate Hall

Leeds