Lloyd Evans

It was another ‘worst week ever’ for Boris. The highlight being his successful bid to make mincemeat of himself by garbling his own lockdown rules at a press conference. At PMQs, he presented an open target and the Labour leader struck early with a highly specific question: Why has Luton emerged from lockdown when other communities haven’t? ‘They’ve pulled together to depress the virus,’ said Boris, sounding tentatively jubilant. Everyone awaited the springing of the booby-trap. But it didn’t come. Luton was an irrelevance. It was a bait without a hook. Sir Keir was firing blanks.

The anti-lockdown rally at Trafalgar Square was organised by Save Our Rights UK. This embryonic organisation is so new that its website only has a single page. And it seems inexperienced at staging large demos. The amplification on a windy day needed to be cranked up to the max but the sound was inaudible from many parts of the square. Dozens of protesters were parading hand-made placards – which is standard practice at a rally – but the slogans were unusually aphoristic and politically astute: ‘Quarantine is locking up the sick. Despotism is locking up the healthy.’ ‘Compliance with stupidity is consent to tyranny.’ ‘When dictatorship becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

Martial law was declared yesterday. And today Boris was expected to arrive at PMQs dressed in jackboots, an olive tunic and wraparound shades, with a Glock 18 machine-pistol tucked into his holster. Instead he wore a plain business suit. Perhaps he wanted to give his people a friendlier impression of their overlord. He seemed unusually jovial and upbeat at the despatch box, despite all the barmy rumours swirling around the internet. He was as bouncy as a spaniel on a trampoline. And he was helped by his secret weapon, Sir Keir Starmer’s over-active legal brain. The Labour leader had spotted a discrepancy between two prime ministerial utterances.

Sir Keir Starmer did a Greta at PMQs today. Without their leader, Labour invited Angela Rayner to duff up Boris in public. On her feet she announced that this would be ‘the Battle of Britain’. And she believed that ‘the whole country’ would be watching.  It was more like a game of hop-scotch between two flirtatious teenagers. The air zinged with puppy-love. ‘I congratulate her on her elevation,’ said Boris, eyeing her up with a Trumpian twinkle. Rayner couldn’t stop smiling as she made a joke about Keir Starmer’s absence which she blamed on failures in the testing system. ‘I heard he’s had a negative test,’ said Boris chattily. ‘I don’t quite know why he's not here.

After last week’s shambles, Boris could barely have performed worse at PMQs today. Sir Keir Starmer began with a horror-story endured by two parents in London.  They needed an urgent Covid test for a feverish toddler but were told that nothing was available in the capital. Go to Romford, was the advice. Then they were directed to Hayward’s heath, (‘half-way to Brighton’ said Sir Keir), then to Telford, then to Inverness, then to Swansea. Finally, after searching all day, they found a precious test in the Lee Valley but it was also being offered to people in Manchester. ‘Who is responsible?’ said Sir Keir, doing his ‘rent-collector short of patience’ voice. Boris stood up.

It was woeful. It was ugly to behold. It was beyond gruesome. Even Boris’s most faithful supporters had to watch PMQs from behind the sofa. Sir Keir Starmer, who turns 58 today, got a fabulous birthday present – a stunningly inept performance from the Prime Minister. Sir Keir demanded a ‘straight answer to a straight question’: when did Boris know ‘there was a problem’ with the algorithm used to decide A-level grades? ‘May I congratulate him on his birthday,’ said Boris – making it clear he hadn’t the foggiest what to say. The Prime Minister then started firing off random phrases in the hope that a coherent sentence might accidentally take shape in mid-air.

LBC broadcaster Iain Dale has transformed his Edinburgh festival shows into a series of Zoom-casts. First up, David Davis. The former Brexit secretary had arranged his web-cam in a study lined with scarlet law-books. A few hours earlier, he said, he’d completed a seven-mile jog. He’s 71. Davis began by criticising the government over the corona-shambles. Last winter the World Health Organisation had rated Britain ‘top of the league in its preparedness’ for a flu pandemic. But the implementation of the plans had been disastrous. The biggest single error was the failure on testing. It was over-centralised. We were over-proud of our test-approach. Had we done what the Koreans or Germans had done, many thousands would still be alive today.