Johnson Administration Tackles Explosive Political Course With Eroded Credibility

Boris Johnson leaves Downing Street on Tuesday after meeting with his ministers. DPA via Europa Press / Europa Press

If it is difficult to start an ocean liner practically stopped, it does not make things easier for the crew and passengers to distrust the captain after a series of contradictory orders.

And the situation worsens when an uncertain iceberg called Brexit looms on the horizon.

Boris Johnson has met this Tuesday in person with his Cabinet for the first time after the summer holidays.

He has four months ahead in which his entire mandate will be at stake and in which he will have to overcome a credibility that has been shattered by the management of the pandemic.

"It is fantastic to meet again in person - safely and with the necessary social distance - and regain for our lives a certain sense of normality, while we remain vigilant to control the virus," the prime minister told members of his government .

It was the same day that two of the most delicate challenges took place to see if Downing Street's desperate desire to return to the routine was shared by the rest of the British.

Almost half of the schools in England and Wales were reopening their doors (the other half have planned to resume their activity from today until next Monday), and a large part of the workers were returning from their holidays.

Johnson's two main bets were cause and effect, because the expectations that the economy would get back on track depended largely on parents relying on the security measures in place in schools and being released to return to school. their offices and workplaces.

The result was ambiguous, although it is still too early to judge whether the government has been able to begin resuscitating a country on assisted breathing.

The doors of the schools have recovered the children's screaming from the first hour, six months after the confinement sent all the students home, but the operation of the subway and bus lines in London and the rest of large cities at half gas , with just 40% occupancy, has shown the difficulty that lies ahead.

Fear of a second wave of the coronavirus is keeping thousands of Britons in their homes.

Teleworking has shown, in the UK as in other parts of the world, that it can be an effective alternative, but not enough to regain full performance of the economy.

The main employer, CBI, has demanded that Johnson lead the campaign to reopen work centers, so essential, its president Carolyn Fairbairn has assured, as well as the schools.

“The costs of keeping them closed are clearer with each passing day.

The busiest centers of our cities today seem like ghost towns, devoid of the usual commercial hustle and bustle.

The price to pay is very high in small businesses, jobs and neighborhood wealth, ”Fairbairn wrote in

.

The most popular term in recent weeks in British political jargon to refer to the Government has been

(change of direction), to define the constant lurching and shifting positions that ministers have given as soon as unpopularity or wrongdoing was demonstrated of your measurements.

Education had to backtrack in its attempt to impose an estimate of selectivity grades (face-to-face exams were canceled by the pandemic) based on a dubious algorithm with a downward trend.

The masks went from being useless to mandatory in shops and schools.

Housing had to extend the ban on evictions to September, to protect tenants from the crisis, after announcing the end of the measure in mid-August.

Every braking and reversing of Johnson's team resulted in the resignation of a senior official, never a minister, cementing the general impression that the Conservative government that arrived in Downing Street last December was fantastic for slogans. but lousy for daily management.

The popularity of the prime minister, who in theory still has four years in office, has plummeted.

According to the latest

, 33% of Britons believe that Labor leader Keir Starmer would be the most suitable leader for the country, compared with 30% who still choose Johnson.

The other third of those consulted are unable to decide on any option.

Conservative deputies begin to show an inexplicable state of nerves before a government in theory so recent and with such a large parliamentary majority.

To the point that bets are already beginning to circulate on Johnson's possible successor, in which the main candidates are his Chief of Staff (a position equivalent to that of the Spanish Minister of the Presidency), Michael Gove, and the Minister of Economy, Rishi Sunak.

They are the two politicians who have managed to maintain a more solid profile in the midst of a government that has shown an elusive profile during these months, when it was not directly scorched.

The Minister of Health, Matt Hancock, has taken all the blows for an erratic management of the pandemic, and the Minister of Education, Gavin Williamson, has become the scapegoat for demonstrated ineffectiveness.

"Let's hope that a summer of chaos, frustration and incompetence will not be followed by an autumn of disaster," said Williamson, face to face in the House of Commons, on Tuesday, Labor spokeswoman for Education, Kate Green.

Nobody has it easy in the Government for the next four months.

The responsibility for a disorderly Brexit will fall on Gove's back on December 31, if the negotiations with Brussels do not come out of their current stalemate.

And Sunak is obliged to begin to close the tap on aid to companies and workers and present a budget that, by force, will no longer be able to have the expansive force that Johnson promised to rebuild the country.

A senior official faced with the challenge of rescuing the Executive

Boris Johnson has pinned all his hopes on 41-year-old Simon Case, the senior official who polished the public image of Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton to give the British monarchy an image of seriousness, stability and continuity, amidst the Constitutional chaos that led to the frightening of Prince William in Canada and the Prince Andrew scandal and his stormy relations with the American millionaire and pedophile, Jeffrey Epstein.

Case will be the second youngest Cabinet Secretary in the history of the country, and will replace the ousted Mark Sedwill at the head of the all-powerful

(high officials) that populate the departments of the British Government.

His proven ability to mediate any conflict and remain calm must be matched with the impetus of Dominic Cummings, Johnson's star adviser, who has vowed to overturn the machinery of power to rid himself of years of bureaucracy.