Boris Johnson and headhunting hornets

Is this a coronavirus fever dream or is Boris Johnson once again stumbling into a PR battle with Marcus ‘Leader of the Opposition’ Rashford?

Johnson has just rejected Rashford’s campaign for school meals over half-term on the grounds that: “We’re in a different position now with schools back open to all pupils… It’s not for schools to provide food for pupils during the school holidays.”

How is it, that when the order of the day is to show calm and decisive leadership Johnson is charging headlong into another inevitable and identical U-turn? The first rule of politics is that you cannot win if you take on children. Everyone knows that. Am I missing something? Is this an attempt of Johnson to garner sympathy by being bullied by a footballer? Is he trying to prove that he is big enough to change his mind? Is he governing in a mad jazz improvisation that only makes sense to connoisseurs? Is he making an artistic statement?

Our Prime Minister is a man who has headbutted a hornet’s nest, been stung hundreds of times, kept walking, seen another one, paused, scratched the sores across his face – and put his forehead through it again. This is madness.  This is a glimpse of how high the rot of rank incompetence has crept up the pyramid of British power.