Many politicians pursue a career based on sound, honestly-held views, and should be accepted as fundamentally good people, even if you don’t always agree with them. But politics can be a dirty business… A successful career often involves extensive, sometimes hypocritical compromises to obtain and maintain power, and progress up the ‘greasy pole’ is driven by deeply competitive instincts. Power can also corrupt.

So, what keeps governments and individual politicians on the straight and narrow and why is this current administration failing the test?

It is the checks and balances of colleagues, the Opposition, the media, voters, and the principles of individual politicians involved which hold governments and the overall political process to account. What happens if some of these influences are missing?

Boris Johnson has been caught telling blatant untruths throughout his career either as a journalist or as an MP, particularly when leading the Brexit campaign. To date, as Prime Minister, Johnson has continued to avoid the checks and balances applied to other politicians, which has led to this vacuum at the heart of his government.

In the face of the hopeless Opposition leader, Corbyn, voters, devoid of a competitive choice, forgave his untruths and gave him a free hand to ‘get Brexit done’ even though the courts and the rights of parliament had been undermined in the process. The size of his majority led him to hand pick mostly weak and dependent cabinet ministers with their advisers, in turn, overseen by his senior special adviser, Cummings. It has been excruciating listening to them defend the PM and Cummings’ alleged breaking of lockdown rules in the past few days, repeatedly reading out identical messages like a widely distributed bot.

Then there is the media. Johnson is undoubtedly a polarising figure and some media are short on objectivity, but their role as scrutineers has been ignored and even denigrated, with the BBC publicly threatened. Johnson and his ministers boycott programmes they dislike and view many journalists simply as ‘enemies’.

Lastly, Johnson, himself, has very few personal, well documented principles to hold him back. Strong Prime Ministers and senior ministers in the past had some sort of moral compass and knew there was a line not to cross; had powerful colleagues, viewed the Opposition warily, feared the press (sometimes too obsessively), and, heaven forbid, even resigned on matters of principle. Not now.

A Johnson premiership was always going to be a high wire act and the Cummings affair has uncovered its weaknesses. Johnson appears to have little understanding of why he is in politics, except as a competition to reach the top, which is why he is so reliant on his bullying key adviser to give him his lines and framework for policy priorities. Huge amounts of political capital have been expended simply to save Cummings’ skin in recent days. Crucially, the whole affair risks undermining social distancing and maintaining control over the future trajectory of this damn virus and it is scandalous that announcements of measures to ease the lockdown are partly timed to drown out condemnation of the government’s response to the ‘architect of lockdown’ breaking his own rules.

But things will, and are, changing. Voters are waking up to the seemingly unacceptable levels of hypocrisy and incompetence in managing this pandemic to date. Cabinet Ministers will be more emboldened to challenge Johnson after this recent debacle. We finally have a decent Opposition leader beginning to offer a genuine, alternative choice and even normally sympathetic journalists are angry and determined to hold this government to account.

The last blog called for more humility from the government. Clearly wishful thinking. Democratic processes, however, have a way of correcting imbalances of power and, if you believe the polls, this appears to be underway quicker than Johnson would have expected. What is also certain is that vacuums get filled, even moral ones…

This has been an incredibly difficult time for the UK Government, indeed any government, as the scale of the pandemic has stretched health, economic and political resources to the limit.

But in the UK, as the incidence of Covid-19 begins to recede, things seem to be getting tougher for those in control, despite palpable success to date in managing the NHS through the crisis. Evidence of errors made as the pandemic emerged is starting to mount. A complacent initial response to the crisis, a brief dalliance with herd immunity, insufficient supplies of PPE and poor testing capabilities have all been well-documented. But as the UK registers the highest death toll in Europe, the scale of errors made in social care, which now account for almost half the recorded deaths make gruesome reading. It seems care homes may have been sacrificed to protect the NHS. The Government is on the back foot and Labour leader, Keir Starmer, is ruthlessly quoting back to ministers their initial, misguided, advice.

There are other errors too. The Johnson broadcast on 10th May was unnecessary and caused confusion. It should have been made after a detailed parliamentary statement on the gradual easing of lockdown. Then there are the devolved regions. The lack of consultation with them, and the breakdown in consensus of how to manage this next phase of the lockdown, was careless in the extreme. You can understand that there are issues of trust when the devolved regions are run by other parties than the Westminster government, but a less arrogant, less careless Prime Minister, could easily have avoided the pitfalls. And what is it about the patronising secrecy of keeping SAGE membership and key advice to ministers away from the public?

In addition, there are questions about the readiness of the test, track and trace strategy and quarantining visitors flying into the UK. The latter seems odd to say the least when there has been no quarantining before! Today, the government mean-spiritedly also refused to back down on charging the highly praised overseas health workers for their use of the NHS.

The whole premise of this UK government, post Brexit, was to lead the country to a glorious and superior future compared to that of our continental European neighbours; but it seems that we have managed to significantly under-perform most of Europe in our response to this pandemic, uncovering all sorts of relative institutional weaknesses. The government refuses to admit errors to date, hiding behind propaganda based on phraseology such as ‘ramping up’. It shamefully denigrates parts of the media (albeit some of the questioning has been poorly targeted) when they are critical, believing good relations are not needed with an 80 seat overall parliamentary majority. It is now starting to move the blame of errors made in managing the pandemic to the scientific advice received. And to cap it all, it arrogantly pursues Brexit negotiations apparently without fear of a No Deal, when a longer transition period would help crippled businesses.

There is much for the Government to learn from the past few months and indeed in the months ahead. You can understand that being in office currently is a brutal experience and there will be the added unpleasantness of facing accusations that ministerial decisions aided a higher death toll than there could have been. But admitting to mistakes, publicly learning the lessons from them, rebuilding consensus with the devolved regions and preparing to extend the transition period for leaving the EU, would all help dispel the lingering unpleasant taste left in the mouth by those in charge.

There is one solution for Johnson and his government to rescue at least some, indeed perhaps a good deal, of its reputation in the coming months. Show humility.

With a sigh of relief, we can say Britain’s Official Opposition is back. After 5 years of Marxist mediocrity and chaos, the arrival of Keir Starmer as leader of the Labour Party is hugely welcome. A grown up with the appropriate intellect is in charge.

And my, is it needed. We are mid-pandemic so an in-depth assessment of the government’s performance and lessons to be learnt is not yet appropriate, but the indicators do not look good. And Keir Starmer, whilst scrupulously polite, is starting to apply the proverbial scalpel to Johnson’s bluster.

A chaotic announcement outlining the start of the end of the lockdown made by Johnson on Sunday (Why do this in advance of a detailed parliamentary statement?) quickly unravelled. Starmer had 6 minutes in the Commons to question the Prime Minister on Monday. He skewered him. A late start to managing the pandemic based on sympathy for the concept of herd immunity and an overall laissez faire philosophy, a general lack of preparedness which encompassed a failure of testing capacity and the initial abandonment of care homes is all forming part of what may be a merciless narrative. And that is before the break in communications with the devolved governments in coordinating the coming out of lockdown.

Having watched Prime Minister’s Question Time today, Starmer was point perfect in his analysis although both leaders to be fair struck the right tone. He took apart the government’s approach to statistics, both in terms of international comparisons and in particular, how they related to care homes. Johnson won’t be able to rabble rouse himself through PMQ’s when attendance is back to normal like he did with Corbyn.

A bright note for this Government is Rishi Sunak who is impressive as Chancellor and surely a potentially worthy successor to Johnson at some point. The rest of the Cabinet is somewhat patchy, but it is perhaps difficult to make any positive impact mid-crisis. What is noticeable, however, is Labour’s improving front bench with Anneliese Dodds as Shadow Chancellor and Lia Nandy as Shadow Foreign Secretary to name but a few stepping up. People with good intellect are appearing/returning and politics will become more competitive as a consequence.

At a leadership level, comparing Johnson to Starmer certainly feels like comparing equals on intellect but perhaps not charisma. Charisma, however, has a certain shelf life and this is shortened if plagued with incompetence. Voters may want a very different style in due course…In the meantime, a stronger Official Opposition creates better government all round. With this in mind, welcome back!

Zoom, BlueJeans, Houseparty…to name but a few…are all wonderful video conferencing facilities. They make lockdown work life just about practical. On average I have half a dozen meetings a week using such facilities including Friday drinks with my distanced team. Conference calls on top keep us all busy.

Such facilities connect friends and family across the globe whilst this terrible pandemic runs its course, bringing much needed relief from isolation. Individuals appear on your screen from just down the road to far flung places such as San Francisco and New York. It is a joy. And yet…and yet…

Last weekend five zoom calls appeared in my diary mostly arranged by my better half, speaking to over 20 people. That was on top of several other social ones during the week. I was told not to be late for any of them whether that was due to work commitments or coming back from my limited (but essential for my sanity) exercise regime. I sensed my narrow window of freedom narrowing further.

Contact lists are compiled and for fear of missing anybody out, video chats are arranged with all and sundry. I have ended up speaking regularly to people I usually do not see for several months on end. Obviously, I am fond of them all, but it always involves talking intently into the screen to those whose company is normally combined with the atmosphere and people watching of a bar, restaurant, or dinner party.

Two back-to-back video conferencing calls can last for well over an hour. It can be exhausting. Thank goodness Zoom limits free group video conferencing to 40 minutes. But for some contacts, we recently agreed to just dial out and dial back in again. And, recently, old school friends also decided a ‘pub quiz’ should form the basis of the next conversation. I hate pub quizzes but find I cannot escape…

Such a medium of communication is stressful. Even with friends and family, you are staring closely at the screen to check jokes and opinions make the desired impact. With work (actually, socially too) you are checking your dress sense looks fine on screen, that the bookshelves behind you are sufficiently stuffed with mind improving tomes and that your glasses are on straight. I realised I went through an entire consultant call last week with wonky specs, so fixed was I on the conversation and everybody talking over each other.

I have become an ‘expert’ in interpreting body language from afar without any idea whether I am right or not. And what really grates is that any bad news is still never delivered face to face but via email.

Oh, the joy of all these multiple channels of video conferencing which allow you from home to visually and conversationally embrace colleagues, clients, family and friends at the click of a mouse. All undiluted. The end of lockdown cannot come soon enough!