Quizmaster Johnson leaves Javid to answer the awkward questions | John Crace

Your starter for 10 … Sajid Javid audibly bristled. Ever since the photo of Boris Johnson hosting the Downing Street quiz night appeared at the weekend, cabinet ministers have become even more tetchy about being asked questions. So the health secretary was on the defensive throughout the morning media round and made little attempt to disguise the fact he was appearing under duress. His return to cabinet has not been nearly as much fun as he had hoped.

But with the Omicron variant spreading at breakneck speed, the Saj had little choice but to turn up to explain why the government had yet again been caught on the hop. How come, said Justin Webb on Radio 4’s Today programme, the government hadn’t accelerated its booster programme last week – or the week before – given the Omicron threat?

And, come to think of it, why had Johnson installed such a hopeless deadbeat as Maggie Throup as vaccines minister? Someone charisma-free who could be relied on to take an age to do next to nothing. Wasn’t that a sign the government had rather taken its eye off the ball in regard to Covid? Even though the possibility of a new variant appearing – as it had in the form of the Delta variant last year – was always on the cards, Boris had acted as if the worst of the pandemic was over.

Javid sighed heavily. Typical BBC to put a negative spin on the superb efforts of the government. It’s now become axiomatic in Boris circles that the BBC should be condemned for failing to do the jobs the prime minister had been unable to do himself. It was the magic of Christmas, Javid said, for the government to be caught out twice in the same way by the coronavirus. An Xmas miracle that would have taken anyone by surprise. Apart from all those doctors and epidemiologists who had widely predicted it.

Try to concentrate on the upside, the Saj continued. Everyone over 18 was going to be offered a booster jab by the end of the year. And as he was effectively offering them the jab now, this was one promise the government could claim to have delivered more than two weeks ahead of schedule. So how about some applause for that? But if nit-pickers, such as Webb, were going to insist the target meant actual jabs in arms then he would promise that as well. Even though that meant administering well north of a million vaccines a day when our previous best for a week had been under 600,000 a day back in May.

Now it was Webb’s turn to be taken by surprise. Surely this meant the NHS would struggle to cope with its ordinary caseload and that more people would die of non-Covid conditions? “People who feel they have cancer will be treated,” the Saj said gnomically. No one had a clue what he meant. You’ve either got cancer or you haven’t, and you almost always need specific tests to determine whether a specific symptom is cancer or not, and Javid had done little to reassure anyone they would get the treatment they need. As so often, it felt as if the health secretary was winging it.

“Let’s talk about Boris Johnson,” said Webb.

“Why bother?” snapped Javid. Er … because he’s the prime minister and he’s up to his neck in trouble over the exponential spread of Downing Street parties.

“What are his qualities?” Webb persisted. Other than that he’s a liar and raging narcissist.

The Saj paused. Trying to dig up just one positive thing to say. “Er … I think people who watched the prime minister’s TV address will have seen someone focused on the nation’s challenges.” Or not. Most will have seen a wreck of a human in his late 50s with the haircut of a 10-year-old who had wandered into a skunk farm with a pair of secateurs by mistake. Someone who was too scared to do a press conference in case he was asked any difficult questions.

“The prime minister works every minute of every day,” Javid concluded. Though obviously not including the times when he’s hosting parties – it’s a wonder any work was done in Downing Street last Christmas – or having babies. Come to think of it, if this is Boris working 24/7 we might be better off with him taking more time off.

Johnson did briefly appear in person around lunchtime to do a news clip from the vaccination centre. Apart from talking up what a brilliant job he had done on Omicron – it was a mystery why we had run out of lateral flow tests – his main contribution was to say that he hadn’t broken any Covid rules last Xmas. No, it was just everyone else in Downing Street who had and he didn’t give a toss what happened to them. Loyalty was for wimps.

Besides, he couldn’t possibly be held accountable for what went on in his place of work. Or indeed his flat. How could he possibly have known that most of his staff were pissed when he was busy thinking up trick questions, such as “Have you had assurance you have not knowingly broken the lockdown rules?”

It was left to Javid to make a second public appearance – this time in the Commons – to give a statement on everything the prime minister had already announced over the past 24 hours. Though not before the Speaker called out Johnson for not having the grace or guts to make the statement in person. When it comes to quizzes, it turns out that these days Boris is much happier setting the questions than asking them.

In reply, the shadow health secretary, Wes Streeting, took issue with some of the details of Javid’s statement on the availability of tests, but said Labour would never play politics with public health and would thus be supporting the booster programme.

His only slightly fanciful moment came when he asked the prime minister to be straight with the country. Boris has never been straight with anyone, so why change the habit of a lifetime? Streeting then got a grip and said it was up to everyone else to show leadership in the absence of any from Johnson. Javid had to actively restrain himself from agreeing. The health secretary has nearly had enough of cleaning up Boris’s shitshows.

What followed was all quite reasonable and amicable. A measure perhaps of how much Omicron has spooked MPs on all sides of the house. Even Mark Harper, who seldom resists the chance to preen his defiance to any measure that might save lives, sounded conciliatory. The one awkward moment came for Javid came when Andrea Leadsom wondered what he might say to her constituent who was now more scared of government intrusion into civil liberty than Covid. The Saj was non-committal. Though he could have said: “See if she feels the same way when she or a relative are on life support.”