Boris Johnson must hate being PM and these days count as good news | Marina Hyde | Opinion

FAce it: Matt Hancock plays the role of Minister for the Pandemic is one of the WTF plays of all-time casting adjacent to science. Not since the Bond movie where Denise Richards played a nuclear scientist deactivating warheads, you wouldn't have felt so convinced. What do I need to defuse this nuclear bomb? Bond wonders, only for Denise to answer: Me. Oh dear. Well, I guess humans have had good sleeves.

Richards would continue to take the Golden Raspberry for his performance as Dr. Christmas Jones (a fine addition to the pantheon of fictional scientists with radioactive stupid names, placing him alongside Bernard Quatermass and The Muppets Bunsen Honeydew).

At this point in his journey as our man at the end of the fight against coronaviruses, it is therefore not clear what will be the reward of Dr. Hatt Mancocks at the end of it all. That timeless kiss, head of the House of Commons? Is a butler to Boris Johnsons a sealed and well-stocked Prime Minister's bunker? Matt surely got his current job only because he can run at the same time as giving a look of a thousand yards and delivering lines like: Sorry, kid, I'm not that kind of doctor.

For now, the health secretary is trying to stop the panic purchases. As Hancock told the audience on Thursday at Question Time at the BBC, he is absolutely convinced that there will be no food shortage and that people should not engage in herd behavior. I know what you are thinking: tell me that I did not expect to take a lecture on the behavior of this type of herd? Matt, you may remember, animated his brief candidacy for the leadership of the Conservatives when he said: A Brexit policy to prorogue Parliament would mean the end of the Conservative Party as a serious party in government. More than that, he said after the D-Day commemorations, it would go against everything that these men who waded on these beaches fought for and died for. And I won't get it. But you will, right, Matt. Two months later, he was with everyone else, running around the supermarket and sweeping bottles and extension bottles in his cart. Don't tell me about the herd, Matt. You are the herd.

But what about the man we could classify as Matts? Imagine if five years ago someone had presented you with this scenario: its March 2020. A global contagion is underway, and we then open as Prime Minister Boris Johnson describes his strategy to prevent it: sing happy birthday twice while washing your hands. Oh, come on, you would have said. Even I cannot suspend my disbelief for this. Stay on the one where Denise Richards is the nuclear physicist. No wait. One where Steven Seagals is an award-winning professor of archeology from Yale.

And yet, we are where we are, as this era takes the Keep Calm And Carry On poster. As for the whereabouts of Johnson, the Prime Minister continues to deviate only occasionally from the self-isolation that has characterized his post as prime minister to date.

Johnson hides mainly in his mansion outside the city, gives embarrassing performances when he shows his face and presents himself as the least serious and most spoiled golden playboy. Were essentially governed by the Batmans cover story. But in a horrible twist, the cover doesn't cover anything. Instead of Boris Wayne having a double life as an extremely skilled and effective force for good, that's it. What you see is what you get. There is no batcave. There is no advanced equipment, no unrivaled martial arts skill, no scientific arsenal. Sorry guys. I'm trying to locate the attributes of the character of Boris Johnsons, and there is nothing here. In fact, hang on, it can make you pregnant. Is that what you want?

On some level, conscious or subconscious, Johnson seems to believe that this is what people are asking him. If you regularly listen to his speeches, it is striking to see how many of them seek to intertwine our national destiny with his own sense of sexual potency. Johnson always offers to do things like put the pencils in the collective pencil, or worry that Trident going to sea without missiles would mean that the whole country is firing blanks. He seems convinced that there is no problem which he could not pass our way, given the opportunity.

And therefore to its radically decreasing opportunities. This week, following the announcement of the birth of a baby in June, Johnson announced that he was taking paternity leave. He knows that doesn't mean leaving after the paternity test, right?

Indeed, my favorite reaction to the news probably came from William Cash, son of Paleosceptic MP Bill Cash, who wrote about the happy event in the Mail on Sunday under the title: Welcome to the Old Dads Club ( and at the Third Wives Club!), says proud father William Cash to his contemporary Boris Johnson.

Mm. I must say that the contemporary obscures a multitude of sins. After all, the last time Cash wrote in the Mail on Sunday about Johnson, he was telling the story of the way he tried and failed to raise one of the Prime Minister's secret children for him. Resume the story as Cash runs into Johnson in Davos (natch) and apologizes hilariously for successfully removing this paternal switcheroo. I wanted to marry Helen and raise your daughter as mine, Cash tells Johnson. It was that simple. According to this account, Johnson replies: This is true. Thanks for letting me know. And then, concludes Cash, we went in different directions.

Lovely people. Either way, let's go back to the latest Cashs article, which begins during a recent fundraiser. I was sitting at a table near Boris Johnson during the final weeks of the Conservative Winter Ball, writes Cash. Get to know that we live in a country where, in the midst of our various shitshows, the Prime Minister was performing for plays a few feet from a guy who had once offered to raise a of his spare children. Even if The Jeremy Kyle Show had not been removed, it would be a scenario just too trashy to broadcast. But here we go. I have a feeling that Boris will enjoy his new life, Judge Cash, a man who is clearly not famous for his judgment.

Anyway, this is all part of the big change of pace for Johnson. Think about it: he was a man who once enjoyed the freedom of one of the big capitals, with a girl in all postal codes, a light work life and a positive buccaneer's irresponsibility. But now? Today, Johnson, 55, has to sleep every night in the same place, with two brass instruments outside his bedroom door and a crying baby in the station. (Do not write about the magic of the newborn; I have had three.) It is rather perfect.

On the work side, instead of a short column and a long lunch, its intrusion contains the harvest of its own Brexit whirlwind and a likely global pandemic. So, given that we have to take our ironic smiles where we can these days, it sounds like a form of poetic justice. Close your eyes halfway, and you could almost go from not wanting Boris Johnson to be prime minister to wanting him to be prime minister like that, forever and ever.

No matter the level; he could end up begging to be brought back to his old life. Otherwise, and in slightly metaphorical terms, this could still turn out to be a story of a Midas character who is quite scary Prime Minister to death.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist