The Part-Time Prime Minister & The Winchester Effect

Or: The feeling that if you just nip off on holiday, it’ll have all blown over by the time you get back

Oct 11, 2021

∙ Paid

There’s that ominous quote - a forewarning, really - from an unnamed adviser who said in the Times from an article written at the height of the first wave of Covid infections on April 19 2020:

May be an image of text that says ""There's no way you're at war if your PM isn't there,' the adviser said. 'And "And what you learn about Boris was he didn't chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn't work weekends. It was like working for an old-fashioned chief executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn't do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.""

This, of course, reflected on the Prime Minister’s absence in the early stages of the pandemic when Boris Johnson skipped several COBRA meetings because he was - b…

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The Part-Time Prime Minister & The Winchester Effect

Or: The feeling that if you just nip off on holiday, it’ll have all blown over by the time you get back

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