The Little Country That Couldn't.

So, Boris Johnson done a speech.

He sat at a little desk, jammed in a doorway, with his hair all neat and repeatedly pounded his fist in his passion. He'd lost a bit of weight and combed his hair. He looked serious.

But he didn't sound serious. And the visuals he presented didn't look serious, they looked like the sort of thing a toddler would order from on a laminated menu: nice big chunky graphics in primary colours, as though the POTUK had stopped colouring in his cardboard buses for five minutes and put the poster paints to government use.

He puffed. He bounced up and down. He banged the desk like an auctioneer who'd just seen "Thor: Ragnarok". And he talked a lot of old nonsense. We were asked to be "alert", presumably to attacks from "the invisible enemy". We were told to go back to work but only if we had the sort of jobs that didn't pay very well, and even then we shouldn't use public transport, we should walk or cycle or take our cars. Also your kids should go back to school, otherwise you'd be bothering important people about who is going to look after your children while you're draped over your lathe. Not that the important people would be there - they'd be driving to the Cotswolds.

Wealthy people can now travel to beauty spots all over the country with impunity: that classic sceptered isle countryside is free to all those who can afford it. If I were the couple who travelled from North London to Ambleside last week and were sent home with a sixty quid fine, I'd be well miffed. This weekend its THE NEW NORMAL.

There are going to be newer, larger fines awarded - we just don't know what for. AWOL from a call-centre, perhaps? Absconding from a fruiterers without the correct paperwork? I know there will be an awful lot of black and Filipino women lying cruciform on the chicken-wire because North London needs its cleaners. Domestic staff are allowed now, too. Some serious lobbying from Rees Mogg there no doubt.

Look, you all saw it. You don't need me to tell you whats going on. I've been saying it all along anyway. But here is a digest version based on what the most recent guidelines have told us: Boris Johnson is willing to let a lot of poor people die. He considers the deaths of 30, 000 plus people "a success" and he didn't apologise or acknowledge any failing, despite his Covid performance being a catalogue of calamitous misjudgements, one of which actually sent him to hospital! But, as he explained, at least it wasn't HALF A MILLION deaths, guys. Now that would have been REALLY bad. So its the second largest tally of mortalities in the world - but we need to make some money and so its time to send the fodder out to die.

We are free now to go out and do as much sport as we like with members of our family. And we can meet one person we don't live with but not two. And I'm not sure if it always has to be the same one. Can you have risky, sexy multiple partners or do you have to nominate a person and stick with them, like the ghosts in "Randall and Hopkirk (deceased)". Do you imprint like a baby bird to its mother, and follow them around with a badminton racket in one hand, jiggling golf balls in your trouser pocket?

What this means, obviously, is that whatever happens from here on in, it will be your fault. Pontius Johnson has washed his hands of the whole bloody show. We've been in lock-down for less than a month and a half. During that time the tabloids have been screaming to know when we can get "back to normal". It remains the only question that anyone remembers Laura Kuenssberg ever asking. Its like banging a dog's bowl on the other side of the door and then rattling the door-knob. Of course the public are desperate to get outside - they've been hounded into doing so by the very people who will blame them for dying!

This could be the English people's finest hour. And I specifically mean the English, as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are keeping a healthy distance from the mad dogs out in the noonday sun. Imagine that - Northern Ireland's five-sided coalition government, peopled almost exclusively by cranks, sectarian bigots and creationists - now look cautious and sanguine by comparison.

The English have never been so alone. They must prevail against a toxic right-wing media that wants them to lick a stranger for Blighty, and a government that has failed to act in anyway to protect its people: no PPE, no money, no testing, no border control. Their one measure was to stay at home, keep away from strangers and wash your hands. Now, after a month and bit they're saying, y'know what, maybe go outside. Maybe go to work. Take a nice drive to the seaside. That's the extent of what the English government has done. Nothing. They hate you and they want you to die and your only defence against them is Piers Morgan suddenly using his powers for good instead of evil.

If England can prevail against that then maybe there's something in this bulldog breed business after all.