Do you feel sorry for Boris?

[User133847]

Seeing the headlines in the papers today and there seems a lot of sympathy for him. The front pages see him looking really forlorn and sorrow regarding the death toll.

When you think a year ago he was planning on ushering in what he deemed as a golden age of Britain. Now 12 months later it's in tatters.

I can understand the sympathy, but wonder whether a Labour PM would be offered the same.

No, terrible morals!
They’re all in for themselves anyway!

Yes I do, because I would feel sorry for any PM having to do his job during a pandemic. Whatever he had done would be wrong, lockdown too early wrong, not lockdown soon enough wrong, close schools wrong, keep schools open wrong etc.

Nope - seeing what a husk of his former self he looks is one of the few things that makes me laugh out loud at the moment. A little ray of schadenfreude sunshine amidst all this death and misery.

No, I don't. He hasn't acted with goodwill, for the benefit if the country. If people do that, you can understand even if you disagree. This man and some of his party act as enemies of the people of this country.

@Chloemol, I take it you're not aware of all those innocent mistakes he and his cronies have made with billions and billions of pounds that were supposed to be channeled into Public Health and instead have been funnelled into their bank accounts?

Absolutely not.

No. Not even a little bit.

No.

Nope.

Nope.

Singularly unequipped to be PM.

Not at this moment no

Listening to him

AgeofExploration - Wow how nasty!

No

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/27/five-ways-the-government-could-have-avoided-100000-covid-deaths

Do I hell as like!

Insufferable clown

I know where I'd like to park that fucking red bus

No I don’t.

No.
In my opinion, Johnson's sympathy for others looks purely like political expediency, not like any sort of empathy or care for the people he is supposed to serve. He is only saying something now because the headline deaths figure is so vast, and a public response is necessary. Does he actually care for all of us? Cannot see any evidence of this at all.

Loathe the way Johnson always makes his 'sympathy' statements about himself ('I feel so awful', etc).
Loathe the fact that Johnson blankly refuses to learn for the future. This virus is still here, still lethal, the vaccine is important defence but not a magic bullet. Why does he refuse to learn from the past, and agree that he may need to do things differently in future? Because he is a weak leader in thrall to the very far right wingers in the tory party, and he won't commit to any future actions until he's figured out which way the tory political winds are blowing.

His own interests utterly trump any empathy or care for anyone else. I am horrified by the huge toll that his mishandling of this pandemic and his appalling selfishness has wrought on so many people, thus I cannot feel sorry for him at all.

Yes sort of and I can't stand the Tories.

Whoever had been in power last year would've been beaten with a stick for getting things wrong. Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't.

His morals, or rather lack of them, don't really come in to this. However I think he's learnt some very valuable life lessons that he wouldn't have if he weren't PM.

@AgeOfExploration

Nope - seeing what a husk of his former self he looks is one of the few things that makes me laugh out loud at the moment. A little ray of schadenfreude sunshine amidst all this death and misery.

That's bloody awful.

I think he is a weak leader who is out of his depth. In fact, I think the Cummings débâcle and events since (including Brexshit) show that he is much more of a follower than a leader.

No, I don't have much sympathy. There is no precedent for the current situation though and we will never really know how any of the others would have reacted either. Shouting from the opposition benches and sidelines about what should be done is almost certainly very different from actually doing it.

He has made some very poor decisions. He was too often led by his (understandable but wrong) anxiety about the economy rather than by his scientific advisers. That has brought us to where we currently are now, with the high death toll.

We are though, doing fairly well at the moment regarding the vaccine rollout, although I wish they would give the second doses as per the manufacturers' instructions rather than waiting 12 weeks.

I don’t know much about politics or how to be a prime minister !
But what I do know is no one in his situation has ever had to deal with a pandemic regardless of how many people are advising him !
He is a person like the rest of us and he can’t win whatever he decides yes he had to put us in Lockdown and then he has been badgered about lifting lockdown cus no one wanted to be in lockdown and people has been financially hurt ! But no matter what he decides people are not happy !
What upsets me is there was no robust plan for care homes or hospitals this is where he can take some blame and not enough funding !
And for all the people who are mingling and breaking rules you can be blamed for spreading it ! (My opinion so please don’t bash )
( if I have made spelling or grammar mistakes don’t bash me )

Yes I do - he is human after all.

God, No!
I despise Boris and his lack of integrity and transparency.

No.

I agree that being PM in a pandemic is a difficult and unenviable job for anyone. But literally every other leader has done better than him. (With the obvious exceptions of Trump and Bolsonaro, those two other right-wing populist men who care more for their personality cult and their bank balance than they do for the wellbeing of the people they supposedly 'serve'.)

He has got it wrong at every turn. And he's not just made mistakes, he's actively, arrogantly chosen the wrong path at every opportunity. I would like to see him in jail, but I'm sure he'll just scamper off in a few months and re-appear on the after-dinner circuit, pocketing a hefty fee each time, and we'll be left with Patel or Raab or Gove in charge.

And the hard-of-thinking will vote the venal fuckers back in in 2024.

However I think he's learnt some very valuable life lessons that he wouldn't have if he weren't PM

Oh, good. Can't wait for his fucking memoirs, then.

When he was potentially dying of coronavirus himself, yes (as much as anyone else in that situation really). Currently, no. All sympathy evaporated pretty quickly when he left hospital soon to say that he will never be able to repay the NHS staff who saved his life. He is the only person in the country to whom this statement doesn't apply!

I think his handling on the pandemic has been abysmal, as reflected in the overall deaths in the UK compared to similar countries.

Particularly ridiculous point was allowing the schools to return for one day post Christmas mixing... Enough to pick up Covid in the rising numbers, but basically gain next to nothing educationally.