Why Boris Johnson deserves gratitude from restless Tories over Omicron – Bernard Ingham

Instead, if you feel like a really good cry, sob your heart out over the Tory party. They are going around with their eyes closed and ears shut and losing their hold on reality.

Perhaps the North Shropshire by-election defeat will bring them as well as Boris up sharp, though perhaps not as sharply as if Labour had won instead of the Liberal Democrats.

How can people be so daft – except to fire a warning shot – to turn their former Brexiteer MP’s 23,000-vote Tory majority into a Europhile Lib Dem win by 6,000? That is enough to make anyone sob.

But it is not just the curious Tory denizens of rural Shropshire who are a cause for concern. It is half the entire party and its mutinous MPs, plus the now ex-Brexit Minister, Lord Frost.

No 10 ought to have been more careful about Christmas parties a year ago. Let us fervently hope that they have learned from bitter experience that you should observe – and be seen to observe – your own rules.

But for Westminster to go ballistic over a few festive drinks among colleagues daily working together – and the PM conducting a Zoom quiz – when the world is in turmoil suggests they have lost their marbles.

Are they not aware that a pandemic has killed tens of thousands of Britons and that it is still with us?

Yet they threaten a leadership contest if he tightens restrictions.

Haven’t they heard their Government has run up a record peace-time debt of around £400bn fighting it, to keep the economy going and to protect the NHS? And yet they want more spending and tax cuts.

Surely they realise that the UK is firmly in the EU’s sights for having the temerity to Brexit, even to the point of it effectively trying to annex Northern Ireland?

Have they not heard that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are threatening the peace of the world with their threats to Ukraine and Taiwan?

Has it escaped their notice that US President Joe Biden is pretty useless generally and no real friend of the UK?

And are they not aware of the sheer poverty of political leadership in Europe with the posturing, vindictive French President, Emmanuel Macron, and Olaf Scholz, the new German Chancellor, who promises to do no one – least of all Germans – any good? By comparison, Boris is a world statesman.

Yet all they can do is rage about year-old Christmas parties and new Covid or Omicron restrictions with infections rocketing, though admittedly not apparently causing as much serious illness.

After 18 months wrestling with a new killing mutant virus, any responsible government would be cautious.

It is nonsense to argue that Boris is limiting individual freedom by stealth or is in the pockets of clampdown scientists. He has somehow to strike a balance while being acutely aware, spendthrift though he is, that the economy needs 
restoring if hopes of a better life across the country are to be realised.

Against this background, too many Tories and their MPs are behaving in a dangerously self-obsessed way. They seem oblivious of the fact that their government, through essentially no fault of its own – even allowing for mistakes in handling Covid – faces the most Herculean task of any post-war administration.

Instead of daily sniping at Boris through the media, aided by assorted leakers, it should be all hands to the pumps to get the UK on an even financial keel and better prepared to weather storms to come.

If they think he is ignoring them, they should privately make sure they have the machinery in place to advise daily, though it would help if Boris made the overtures in rebuilding trust.

In short, I believe the Tory party is behaving irresponsibly, given the momentous challenges facing its own government at this time.

I fully accept that Boris needs to pull his socks up. But so does his self-indulgent Parliamentary party.

Otherwise, we shall all be crying our hearts out. In any case, in spite of the manoeuvres of Chancellor Rishi Sunak, Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, former Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt and the devious game being played by Michael Gove, there is no heir apparent.

Given this, Tories should face reality and make do with – and improve on – what they have got this Christmas.

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