Dan Wootton: Come on Boris, show us you're up for the fight

Boris, front up. Hiding from your people is beneath you.

But actually the news – away from your terrible decision to attend a party in May 2020 at the height of an immoral lockdown – is bloody good. Daily Covid cases have fallen by nearly 40 per cent in a week, showing our Omicron wave is literally collapsing.

England is coping better than Wales, Scotland or Northern Ireland – and we have made European countries like France and the Netherlands that plunged themselves back into pre-Christmas lockdowns with the most dystopian restrictions yet look ridiculous.

But Boris, even your friends are losing faith, and you literally have just a few weeks to make a difference. To prove you can make the UK the first major country in the world to emerge from this hellish pandemic. To prove you can revive the economy and cut taxes.To prove you can reverse course.

By staying locked away today you look finished. You’re allowing your fate to be in the hands of Rishi Sunak, your Chancellor who has only offered tepid support and has the power to torpedo your premiership with a resignation letter. And putting the politics to one side for just one moment, this is too important a time for the UK to stutter on with a leader without authority.

So you must claim the agenda back. If you continue on this path, you have five months max left as Prime Minister. You are facing an utter mauling in May’s local elections. The utterly hopeless Leader of No Opposition Keir Starmer has somehow eeked out a TEN POINT lead in the polls. And, let’s be honest, no one wants Prime Minister Starmer, not even his deputy.

But this has become a referendum on you. Ironically, Boris you have started to see sense these past few weeks.

You were, maybe just maybe, remembering that you’re meant to be a libertarian.

Encouraged by your backbenchers and stung by the devastating resignation of Lord Frost, you discovered you have a backbone by staring down the doomsday scientists who embarrassingly misjudged Omicron.

Come on then Boris, show us you’re up for the fight. Claim the initiative.

Prime Ministers very rarely reclaim lost support.

So Boris, the clock is ticking to save your premiership.