Boris Johnson finished as PM? Fat chance – he’s still in robust good form
CONSIDERING the array of close family and friends lining up to kick him between the legs, stab him in the back and pull the rug under his premiership, Boris Johnson is in robust good form.
A sensational new book by Tom Bower claims the PM’s philandering father broke his mother’s nose.
Spectator Editor and perhaps ex-pal Fraser Nelson blames Boris for letting down loyal political allies.
And Chancellor “Dishy Rishi” Sunak is being measured up as the next premier just as the virtual Conservative Party conference opens to Covid-emptied halls across the nation.
Yet there was Boris today — statesmanlike, tie straight, cool as a cucumber — facing Andrew Marr’s barrage of questions about broken promises and U-turns.
Was he creating Covid chaos with his Rule of Six and 10pm pub curfew? Had he raised false hopes of a world-class test-and-trace system? Was he wantonly destroying the economy?
“Are you crazy?” barked Boris. “I am a freedom- loving Tory. I don’t want to impose measures like this.
“Nobody in my position wants any of the things we have to do.”
Then he added the slogan he should have rolled out weeks ago — before so-called “experts” spread panic and hysteria across the land. “We need to live fearlessly but with common sense,” he said.
This was the message we should have heard before we were led to believe the NHS was on its knees.
And certainly before Health Secretary Matt Hancock warned petrified children: “Don’t kill Grandma.”
BARRED FOR LIFE
Today we learned “Mad Professor” Neil Ferguson had scared ministers witless with the terrifying spectre of not just 500,000 Covid coffins but 1.5MILLION dead and dying.
The real number so far is just over 42,000 — fewer than the toll from winter flu two years ago when the NHS really was swamped.
Fear-mongering Ferguson should be barred for life from any further role in public health. In fact it was Boris himself yesterday who did more than the experts to put his finger on the actual reason most of those patients died.
It was not because they were old, frail, black or Asian.
It was because they were — mostly — too FAT. Many already had conditions associated with excess poundage, such as heart disease, diabetes and respiratory illness.
Our entire economy has been frizzled by fat.
When I got this wretched thing, I was too fat
Boris Johnson
“When I got this wretched thing, I was too fat,” Boris confessed to Marr. “This is a teachable moment. As a nation we are fatter than almost anyone in Europe.
“Obesity is one of the problems this country needs to address, not just because it threatens our health but because it puts pressures on the NHS. It costs us a fortune in taxation.”
Yet far from cutting out the cakes and chips over lockdown, the population has piled on tonnes of extra collective lard.
We are fatter now than in February. Two-thirds (63 per cent) of adults are obese and one in three children leaves primary school overweight.
Fat-related illnesses cost the NHS £6billion a year.
After his own brush with death in April, Boris was asked for the best way to avoid being killed by Covid.
“Don’t be a fatty in your 50s,” he said, before embarking on a rigorous fitness regime.
Having since shed almost 2st, the Prime Minister insists he is now “fitter than several butchers’ dogs”.
BOLD LEADERSHIP
This is good news. There are plenty of other big challenges facing Britain. We need a butcher’s dog in the closing rounds of Brexit.
“The people of this country have had enough,” said Boris.
We need a fully fit Prime Minister to fight rising crime, reform the public sector “Blob” and beat off anarchists who have infiltrated protests against racism and global warming.
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These are massive tasks which require bold leadership.
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We need to unleash Home Secretary Priti Patel against ruthless gangsters shipping modern slavery victims across the Channel.
But most of all we need a streamlined, fully-fit, low-fat Prime Minister to lead the country out of a Covid mess which has put the prosperity and life chances of generations in peril.
Let's wait and see
IS Donald Trump fighting for his life or breezing through an illness that has proved lethal for his age and weight profile?
To use his favourite phrase, let’s wait and see.
In any event, the American President is acting as an involuntary test case for the rapidly advancing medications that have already got this potentially lethal virus on the run.
He will obviously get the best of non-invasive medical care.
But that medical care would not have been on offer when this pandemic hit six months ago.
We’ve come a long way since then.
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