Greetings, Britain. It’s me – Johnny Coronavirus – here to warn you that things are about to get a whole lot worse. Worse, that is, for you. Better for me, I guess, except that I’d rather be in the Seychelles, only my agent says he’ll drop me if I quit in the middle of my biggest European success ever. So here I am, stuck in the muddle with you.
Worse for you because, as we all now know, you are in the grip of a Mutant Prime Minister.
I know – it’s a cruel twist of fate. Boris 19 was already horribly infectious: during his election campaign he managed to elude the immune responses of all but the healthiest sceptics. But Boris 20 is even more contagious, transmitting himself via relentless press conferences and popping up all over the country in his high-viz-and-hubris protein coat to waffle and lie.
There does seem to be some debate about the scale of mutation: Brexiteers, Tory MPs and Charles Moore all insist that Boris 20 is completely different to Boris 19 and that the monumental destruction he is wreaking couldn’t possibly have been predicted. But others argue that the Prime Minister has always been a dangerous mutant and that the recent change is being exaggerated by his allies to excuse their catastrophic failure to contain him. Opposition leaders point out that they’ve long recommended a ‘zero Boris’ strategy and claim that the present crises could have been avoided if the Prime Minister been suppressed at the outset.
Whatever – the upshot is clear: over the coming weeks the transmission of sleaze and incompetence spread by Boris 20 will bring spiralling levels of misery and death. As a humble virus I could never have achieved all this on my own. But I do feel a twinge of guilt at having such a devastating support act.
Your Mutant Prime Minister is also causing mayhem abroad, with your old pals the French gleefully leading international efforts to prevent a global spread of Boris 20. Closing the border to lorries may have been a typically disproportionate act of Gallic spite, but as a stunt to portray you guys as a national basket-case it could hardly have been more effective: Boris-Britain is now banned worldwide as a plague state, scorned by such bastions of good governance as Iran and Colombia. Just don’t blame me.
So how is the rest of your government responding? My spies in the Home Office tell me of hurled paper-weights and screeched expletives as the news is broken to Priti Patel that her Christmas mass-deportation plans have been stymied by the chaos at Dover. Sorry to dash any lingering hopes that she might one day mutate into a human being. Over in Education Gavin Williamson is demonstrating his world-beating ignorance by boasting that Britain has a much better Mutant Prime Minister than every single other country, while Health Secretary Matt Hancock can only fight back his crocodile tears and admit that Boris 20 is ‘out of control’. Michael Gove is busy praying to Satan that his rival screws up so badly that even Brexiteers, Tory MPs and Charles Moore can no longer defend him, while writing to Santa for the keys to Number 10 and to Vladimir Putin for some novichok just in case.
Meanwhile in the animal kingdom reports are emerging of widespread fears within the bat and pangolin communities that the Mutant Prime Minister will jump species. ‘We remain alert to any rise in levels of chronic indecision, fibbing, and stupid hair,’ say their spokes-creatures Chris Flitty and Antony Eater. Happily Sir David Attenborough is arranging a Zoom call to reassure them that such self-destructive evolutionary quirks are exclusive to homo sapiens.
So all in all it looks like you’ll be seeing a lot more of me in 2021. Happy Christmas.
© C P Jenkinson 23/12/2020
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