Boris Johnson’s chronically inept government is about to face its biggest test

This autumn the PM must contend with the threats of mass unemployment, a second Covid-19 wave and a no-deal Brexit.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson puts on a facemask as a precaution against the transmission of the novel coronavirus during a visit to the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service HQ in Belfast on August 13, 2020. - Ireland's prime minister Michael Martin said Thursday that his British counterpart Boris Johnson was "very committed" to reaching a trade agreement with the European Union after they met in Belfast. (Photo by Brian Lawless / POOL / AFP) (Photo by BRIAN LAWLESS/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Aspects of Boris Johnson’s clandestine holiday in a rented Scottish croft were mildly amusing. What sane landlord would trust such a charlatan with an honesty box for using the telephone? And what an astonishing shock of hair baby Wilfred sports just four months after his birth.

I also found myself hoping, quite sincerely, that Johnson enjoyed a decent rest. That is not because I harbour benign feelings towards this uniquely rotten Prime Minister, but because he returns to face an autumn in-tray that makes the mountains of the Applecross peninsula look like molehills. Much as I loathe the man, it is emphatically not in Britain’s interests that he fails.