Do you know what this hassled old Etonian in an opulent front room announcing a vague sketch of a shutdown reversal plan to an already free nation reminds me of?
Nelson Mandela’s 27-year imprisonment and struggle against apartheid, that’s what.
This must have been the reasoning at Telegraph towers last night, where the Prime Minister’s musings on whether to maybe, or maybe not, open a few more shops, perhaps, in a few months, have been compared to the anti-apartheid revolutionary and former president of South Africa on its front page this morning.
“The long road to freedom” is a clear echo of Mandela’s autobiography The Long Walk to Freedom – except it’s much more poignant, of course, because rather than state-imposed racial segregation it’s about, y’know, the use of park benches and whether or not you can go to a garden centre this summer and stuff.
Picture: Twitter