Italy has just voted to cut the number of its MPs by a third. Surely it is time that this benighted country did the same? At the moment, the entire country seems to be run by a cabal of four in Johnson, Hancock and the two gloom merchants Whitty and Valance. The back benchers and Parliament itself are being ignored but hopefully this might be overturned on Wednesday when an extension to the Covid 19 bill will actually be debated in Parliament.

As for Bunter J himself, has ever a man looked more haunted than he does at the moment? His burning ambition was to be prime minister of this country, but I fear that the job is proving far beyond his capability and it shows, not only in the extreme illogicality of his decisions but in his general demeanour. This is not the ebullient bouncy Bunter that so many people hoped would pick the country up and lead it into a triumphant independence. This is a haggard-looking, slope-shouldered loser who really does appear but a shadow of his former self.

The irony of it all is that across the Atlantic, Donald Trump who was said not to really want the presidency, is clearly relishing every moment of his time in power – and I would think he has far more on his plate than our ‘Revered Leader’ over here.

But surely it is Bunter’s own fault? Yes, he was very ill and that had had an undoubted effect on him but he chose to come back to work and immediately began to muck things up. Successful prime ministers choose and appoint shrewd and experienced brains to advise them. Then they take the advice of those they appoint. The praise when things work and the blame when they fail always accrues to the person at the top so serious consideration has to be given to the advice offered. Since the first virus flew across the Channel, as even the average household parrot knew it would, Bunter J has chosen the worst possible advisers and relentlessly followed their catastrophic advice.

We now know that up to a third of the approximately forty-five thousand folk, recorded as dying from the Coronabug did not die of it at all. The figures were cooked to exaggerate the dangers of living and justify the systematic destruction of the economy and so many businesses and lives. Every year about twenty five thousand people die of flu and/or pneumonia, but that is accepted as just another minor danger in our lives.

And let’s face it, these flue and coronabug deaths are overwhelmingly coming from the weakest of people – the very old or those suffering from a serious pre-existing condition. Britons have never panicked over this – just grieved and got on with life.

So what is the true Covid death toll? Probably about half the supposed total waved so hysterically before us, when the final analysis is calculated – which it will be. This in a nation of sixty seven million so as a percentage the figures are very small by any standards.

Yet the entire economy is in fragments. Democracy is vanishing as Britons’ age-old rights to be free citizens are trampled by so-called ‘marshals’ recruited from nobody quite knows where. Over the past few days, the papers have been filled with pictures of these ‘City Marshalls’ in their smart jackets and they all look very Eastern European. I am all for handing out jobs when necessary but not giving these screwballs the power to affect all our lives.

Despite the gullibility and agreement to panic of so many citizens – friends and relatives of mine among them – I suspect that a people’s revolt is coming and needs but a trigger incident to set it off. I hope it does not prove too damaging, but the smashing of this proud, fought for and so often defended democracy cannot go on just because a bunch of useless bumblers has taken over.

And let’s face it, Britain is in the grip of truly mad science. On the advice of his ‘advisory panel’ – is that the Fatuous Four again I wonder – it seems that Bunter J and his team are considering following Scotland’s lead and imprisoning university students in their dormsitories. The police have been ordered to enforce a nationwide pubs and restaurants curfew and the courts to administer fines of up to ten thousand smackers on those who refuse to self-isolate. This is barbaric damnit!

A national edict has even been issued, warning that only those in an ‘established relationship’ are allowed to have sexual intercourse, although if this was one of Bunter’s ideas, it surely takes hypocrisy to a new level of petty forgetfulness! Besides, what is an established relationship for God’s sake?

‘We got one briefing note a few weeks ago about how people could be allowed to mingle,’ a government Minister is reported to have revealed. ‘It said they could meet in the garden if they socially distance but couldn’t enter a Wendy house if there was one. We have become the Government that wants to lock down Wendy houses. Boris has been totally captured by Witless and Unbalanced. It is insane.’

That it undoubtedly is but hopefully this will be brought to a halt on Wednesday. The Brady Amendment, which will require Ministers to secure parliamentary approval for any further extension of lockdown, will be voted on and unless Downing Street gives significant ground beforehand, it will surely see Bunter’s eighty seat majority overturned with room to spare. ‘We’ve got the votes,’ one Tory rebel said. ‘People have had enough. Advisers can advise, but the politicians have to have their say now.’

There are several reasons why the patience of Conservative MPs has finally snapped. One is that advisers Chris Whitty (Witless or Professor Gloom) and Patrick Vallance (Unbalanced or Doctor Doom) are massively over-reaching their brief. At the start of the pandemic, the strategy was clear. Introduce temporary restrictions, ‘squash the sombrero’ that represented the Coronabug advance through the population and protect the NHS.

But Ministers and MPs believe Boris’s advisers have persuaded him to sign up to a ‘zero-Covid’ strategy of complete eradication of the virus – something most scientists say is impossible to achieve in a large, open country such as Britain.

After last week’s Cobra meeting, a joint statement was issued by Downing Street and the devolved nations. It committed the Government to ‘suppressing the virus to the lowest possible level and keeping it there, while we strive to return life to as normal as possible for as many people as possible.’

What sort of idiotic officialese is that? So far, the ‘experts’ just have not been expert enough. From the use of face-masks to restrictions on mass gatherings, there have been too many reversals and mixed messages.

‘We’re being kept in the dark on the figures,’ one Minister told reporters. ‘then all of a sudden, Whitty pops up with this graph which shows it’s all going to be cataclysmic and everyone’s saying, “Hang on, what is this?” It’s not a prediction. It’s not hard data. So what is this guy actually talking about here?’

To be fair, not everyone in government has the same jaundiced view of their counsel. ‘At the start, they were actually quite balanced,’ said another senior Tory. ‘If you look at the idea of closing the airports, Whitty said, “You can do that. But it will obviously create serious disruption.”’

Another Minister tells us that the problem lies not with the two most senior advisers, but with the sprawling Sage panel. ‘Whitty and Vallance understand there’s got to be some balance in this. But Sage are proper Covid Nazis. There aren’t any measures too strong for some of them.’

But there are for Bunter and his Ministers I am afraid. So far, the Prime Minister has been doggedly, if somewhat clumsily, trying to follow the science. But doing that is almost certain to end in a head-on collision with economic and political reality and we are all going to feel it.

The reality is that by supposedly following the science, Bunter J has become blinded by it. The loss of jobs – the loss of personal liberty – the loss of perspective that Covid has wrought on a nation that once prided itself on its moderation and capacity to keep calm and carry on.

We can only pray that common sense will be the criterion on Wednesday.

The Royal Family’s 2019 accounts reveal that the Biscuit and his Yank made the costliest Royal trip of the year by a very long way .Their African tour cost us taxpayers an eye-watering two hundred and forty six thousand pounds – many thousands more than any of the others – and shortly after it was over, they sailed away to a luxurious life in California where they can lecture the world to their hearts’ content – and get paid handsomely for doing so. 

I was horrified when I first read these figures but on reflection, was it not the best quarter of a million quid, we tax payers have ever forked out? If nothing else, it exposed the Sussexes as a grasping, ungrateful pair of vaguely insane narcissists.

Britain is well rid of them I’m afraid but I still feel some sympathy for Queenie.