It is a while since I commented on the state of the world, but I have been busy. That is my excuse at any rate.

It seems that nothing much has changed for the better – in this soggy little island at any rate. We have had a complete fiasco over school examination results and many people suffered. There was utter chaos over government handling of the problem and an entire generation of future voters are unlikely to trust the Tories with anything for the foreseeable future.

And where was our revered leader while this was going on? Leading from the front and picking up a broken nation with his rhetoric and bravado as his hero Churchill once did? Supporting his hapless and witless Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson perhaps?

Not a bit of it. Bunter J was in a remote corner of Scotland, pretending to rough it in a tent with luxury cottage attached. The only person who seemed aware of his presence for nearly a week was the local farmer who was left cursing the fact that the tent had been pitched in his field without permission and Bunter had even started a camp fire which the farmer tells the media was ‘bloody dangerous’ in the circumstances.

Leaderless and rudderless, the government has lurched along with it’s unimpressive handling of the Coronabug crisis. Imposing new lockdowns here and there, quarantining travellers without any warning, telling us all how we must live, encouraging people to use fast food outlets from Monday to Wednesday and generally seeming to pretend that we are on the brink of Armageddon.

Why damnit? Surely we have taken enough nonsense from this lot and it is time to worry about the huge rise in unemployment and the catastrophic damage that is being done to the economy. For the first time in history, the British government are over two trillion pounds in debt yet the clowns in power don’t seem to worry about it.

And you know, the Coronabug death rate has been declining for months. There has been a ninety five per cent fall since the peak in April. Coronabug casualties are now six times lower than deaths from flu and pneumonia. In the week to July 31, just over two per cent of deaths in England and Wales were caused by the bug.

There is still huge anxiety among parents and trade unions about the reopening of schools. This despite the fact that children don’t seem to suffer from the virus or spread it. Just one healthy child is known to have died from Covid in Britain, and there is not a single case recorded worldwide of a child giving the virus to a teacher.

We all know who is at greatest risk (the very old like me, the very fat, people with Caribbean and Asian backgrounds or with underlying problems such as diabetes and lung disease), and our clinicians have got much better at treating and managing the disease.

So I fear there is no reason why Britain’s hapless politicians can’t change the record  and they must do so fast, even if it disrupts their precious holidays. For too long this country has been ruled by paranoia. But surely economic logic and common sense dictate that we can’t remain paralysed for much longer or the economic consequences will swamp us all.

The priority now must be to restart the engines of commerce and rebuild the economy. Life is never without an element of risk, and as long as we are sensible – as most of us are – we need to get back to normal and free ourselves from this terrible state of national funk.

So now must surely be the time for Bunter J to stop faffing about and don the mantle of a leader to issue a call to arms. He may fancy himself as the reincarnation of Churchill, but so far he has failed to match the great man’s courage at a time of national crisis. Now, more than ever, he needs to throw off his caution and rally the nation. In recent times he has been found deeply wanting and nothing better illustrates this than his invisibility during the unprecedented chaos over examination results.

Why on earth has he not come out and apologised to the kids who worked hard for years for their exam results only to be let down by a system run by the gormless Gavin Williamson? One day students were told they had failed, the next that they’d excelled, although their places at their chosen universities or colleges had been taken by others amid the bedlam. A* grades have now been scattered like confetti, throwing everything into further disarray and threatening untold consequences in the future.

Amid such chaos and so much disappointment, lie the broken dreams not just of today’s teenagers, but of their parents and their grandparents. Three generations of furious potential voters who will have given up on Bunter and his clowns. 

Any adviser worth their salt should have warned him of the damage his continuing absence is doing to his reputation. Politically and strategically it is an utter disaster I am afraid. What was our ‘revered leader’ – usually the consummate communicator – thinking, hiding away in Scotland when the country yearned for leadership? A couple of tweets was all we got. Who does the man think he is – ruddy Donald Trump?

So many of us who voted Tory are bitterly disappointed with him. He should have been on the airwaves telling us he understood the students’ pain and that of their families; assuring the nation that his heart went out to them; accepting that his government had let them down and promising that he would put it right.

I can only think that he and his Cummings-led advisors must think they are immune from the daily hammering being handed out by the media. I imagine they dismiss it as hysteria and froth, but in my humble opinion, Bunter J’s silence has done nothing but twist the knife in thousands of voters’ hearts – and caused the Prime Minister and his Government immense, if not irreparable, damage. If there was a general election tomorrow, I fear they would be even more humiliated than Labour was at the last one.

I did smile when I read that Gary Lineker had offered space in his £4 millon London mansion to a refugee. How noble of the man! In doing so, this overpaid football pundit tweeted, ‘Can we make it clear that not everyone in this country is heartless. These poor people deserve the help of their fellow human beings.’

It would certainly provide one solution to the current problem. Just a few days with that sanctimonious, virtue-signalling bore would have even the most desperate asylum-seeker begging for a ticket back across the Channel.