Unless Ministers get more grown-up in their rhetoric, they are going to set expectations at a level they cannot and should not meet.
The Government’s approach is unlikely to bring out the best from those upon whom it depends to get things done.
Pursuing legislation that enables the Government to rewrite the Protocol unilaterally would be reckless and will make matters worse.
One controversy may be considered to be a misfortune, two looks like carelessness and three suggests a pattern of behaviour.
In addition to the broad question about the Chancellor’s political judgement, I think he faces three specific problems.
The criticism of him in the newspaper most read by Party activists took little account of the effects of war and pandemic on the choices he must make.
If the war lasts a few years at most, the Chancellor can take the hit. If it’s a new normal that lasts for decades, the outlook is grim.
His Mais lecture revealed more about what he’d be like as Chancellor during the normal times that once again are denied us.
The fundamental problem is that costs are going up faster than we are getting more productive.
And: surely Johnson wants to know who authorised the Nowzad instruction. Plus: go on – make it all about Brexit.
Some say this that they are inherently discriminatory. Too right they are – but ‘discriminatory’ does not mean the same as ‘unfair’.
One can be confident that arguments to the contrary are the sort of defeatist doom-mongering up with which Johnson will not put.
Here are six recent examples of how the Prime Minister has been mugged by reality.
He has enthusiasm and determination. These qualities made him an enjoyable Ministerial colleague to work with. They also drove his downfall.