Boris Johnson will have to take the blame for this coronavirus crisis – his premiership is a wreck

The prime minister will face the music after Professor Neil Ferguson said beginning the lockdown a week earlier ‘would have reduced the final death toll by at least a half’, writes John Rentoul

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In any other trade, Boris Johnson would have turned up at the daily news conference and said: “I’ve managed to book an urgent appointment to get my hair cut; I’m off; Rishi’s in charge now, so if you have any questions, you’ll have to ask him.”

But in politics prime ministers tend to go on being prime minister, and to cling to the job long after they appear to have lost it. Thus this prime minister had to go in front of the camera, with a prepared minor announcement designed to make people feel better, having found, by the time he got to the dining room in No 10 where these things are filmed, that one of the government’s top scientific advisers had said the Covid-19 death toll is twice as high as it should have been.

Everyone who has ever worked in No 10 tells the same story. Life in that building consists of a relentless struggle against chaos. It is firefighting, never knowing where the next flames are going to erupt.