A more humble Boris – by Iain Martin

It's often said that Boris Johnson gets into trouble because he has the attention span of a flea and is too lazy to control his case, leaving him to rely on charm and deep decision-making pants to get out of a difficult situation. hole.

I don't know if there's any truth to that, as I've heard exactly the opposite from those who worked with him as Mayor of London. But what this lockdown has revealed about the Prime Minister's psyche is a tendency toward addiction: an addiction to giving us deadlines that he has been unable to meet.

Thus, during the first confinement, the Prime Minister announced that the virus should be eliminated in three months, then he predicted the end of summer. Last fall he said the worst should be over by Christmas, then last week said the lockdown would hopefully be lifted by Good Friday.

In my opinion, this spirit of Boosterism optimism, if you will, is one of the most positive sides of his character. It was his optimism and his reluctance to opt for Asian-style authoritarianism that prevented him from locking down the country last February or putting us under house arrest over Christmas.

But today Johnson, during a visit to some of south Manchester's worst-hit flooded areas, shifted gears. He ultimately admitted that this latest variant of the virus is spreading so quickly that it is too early to say whether restrictions will be lifted by late spring or even summer.

And this time, Johnson was more realistic about setting a future deadline, saying we would need to look at how they fare once the four priority groups have been vaccinated by mid-February.

Such frankness is a better, more honest approach and I think audiences will appreciate him being open with them, rather than giving them false hope.

Enduring a lockdown is bad enough without your expectations and release date constantly being exceeded. And that's one of the many reasons why everyone you talk to says this lockdown is so much harder to bear.

It's far better to pull together and live as best as possible while the vaccination rollout continues: almost five million people have now received their first dose, with 363,508 first vaccinations administered yesterday, the highest daily figure yet day.

There is more sunny news: starting this week, there is an extra hour of daylight every day, and every month from now on, an extra hour per day.

What does Trump's letter say?

Joe Biden signed 17 new executive orders on his first day in the White House, more than any other US president in history.

The new president immediately got to work taking executive action on a range of issues from requiring mask wearing on federal property to reversing some immigration decisions made by his predecessor, former President Trump. He destroyed many of Trump's environmental measures by rejoining the Paris accord on climate, the U.S. census and immigration.

Biden also made changes to the US response to Covid-19, hoping to ease financial pressure on those affected by the pandemic. He implemented new rules on racial injustice that will require congressional legislation, calling on federal agencies to eradicate economic and racial injustice.

Biden is reversing several of Trump's anti-immigration policies by refocusing deportation efforts on undocumented immigrants who have committed crimes in the United States.

What Biden didn't reveal, but what we really want to know, is what Trump said in the traditional letter an outgoing president writes to his successor.

Of course, Biden didn't reveal the game, although he said he would check with Trump about releasing its contents. But he said the letter was generous. One of the wittiest attempts to guess the contents of the letters circulating on Twitter was: Joe, you know I won.

And then?

Take a look at Reaction tomorrow to see what the world might look like when we emerge from the Covid nightmare and start living as normally as possible. Douglas McWilliams writes for us about what shape we can expect from the global economy and how the UK will fare. Olivia Gavoyannis looks at the future of vacations and the travel industry, while Caitlin Allen plans to show the game of cat and mouse. between new variants and vaccines will play out.

Maggie Pagano,
Editor-in-chief