I very much doubt if Boris Johnson will ever be rated amongst the greatest of our prime ministers, but I do not think anyone who might have held the post over the past couple years would have been. He’s had to face a pandemic which has been worse than anything of its kind since the Black Death.

Fortunately, modern medical science has created a powerful defensive weapon in the form of the Covid jab, and this has been well used, with our vaccination programme standing out as amongst the best in the world. This programme would have been even better but for the childishness of the “anti-vaxxers”. 

The Prime Minister is no scientist, but he has shown common sense in listening to the advice of leading scientists in deciding which measures to impose on the country. Inevitably these measures have had both economic and social costs, but there would have been huge economic and social costs in doing nothing.

In his plea to the public to get vaccinated, the Prime Minister revealed anecdotal evidence that up to 90 per cent of patients in NHS intensive care beds have not had a booster vaccine. I find it, as I am sure Boris Johnson does too, highly irritating that some of his critics condemn his social restrictions as anti-democratic or dictatorial. They might as well say that of a 30 mph limit on a crowded urban street.  

I do not find any pleasure in being jabbed, nor in wearing a face mask whilst doing my shopping in the local Waitrose, as my spectacles mist up, but if it avoids the spreading of the virus then I just have to put up with that for an hour or so once a week. 

As for the Prime Minister’s own position, there is not much doubt that he lacks the support of the electors at large, but that is not an immediate worry. Far more worrying is the fall in his support amongst Conservative backbenchers, with a very real possibility that he might not win a vote of no confidence in the 1922 Committee, were one to be called.   

Keep Christmas

It was a happy Christmas Day for me as nine of us gathered around the television to hear the Queen and then toast her health in good English champagne. After that came more champagne and some canapes before a rather late lunch of beef Wellington with all the trimmings and a fine red wine, followed by Christmas pudding and mince pies. 

A bit over the top? Well, yes. All that feasting seems fair enough to mark the depth of winter and the gradual lengthening of the days towards the spring, but it hardly seems appropriate to mark the birth about two thousand years ago of a child in a stable in Bethlehem.

Perhaps we should move that celebration to the winter solstice and call it “Wintervalle”, leaving December 25 as a religious festival? Then all of us Christians, members of other religions and atheists alike could celebrate the turn of the year with our feasting before turning to our religious devotions on December 25.

No, perhaps not. The printers would set out to sell us two lots of greetings cards and there are possibilities of a bit of confusion between the northern and southern hemispheres. We shall have to stick with it as it is.

The Good Friday fallout

Looking back at past crises, the Daily Telegraph of last Tuesday, December 28, reported a story that in 1992 the then Irish taoiseach asked our then prime minister, John Major, “Do you think we can defeat the IRA?” Major is supposed to have responded, “Militarily, that would be very difficult.  I would not say this in public, but in private, I would say, possibly no.”

I am not a great admirer of John Major and believe he was wrong to authorise secret talks with Martin McGuinness of the terrorist gang IRA/Sinn Fein whilst the bombings and murders continued in Ulster and indeed here on the mainland.

By the time Tony Blair signed up to the Good Friday Agreement our intelligence services had infiltrated into the highest ranks of the IRA, which was facing complete defeat of its military terrorist campaign. That agreement guaranteed terrorists immunity from prosecution, but left those who had fought against them still open to prosecution.

All in all, 2021 was a pretty awful year, but ended more hopefully than it began. Welcome, 2022.