Boris needs a Blair-like focus to save his party from mission vacuum

EVERY Sunday afternoon when the newly knighted Tony Blair was in No 10, he would sit down and handwrite a letter to his key aides and Cabinet ministers.

- Tom Newton Dunn

In it, Blair would set out the government’s mission for that week, what he wanted it to achieve, and what he wanted his people to say.

Every single week he did that, a former aide once told me.

I marvel at the terrifying message discipline the weekly missives reveal. But, oh, for a Sunday afternoon letter from our Prime Minister now.

As MPs return to work today after Parliament’s Christmas break, it’s hard not to start wondering what the point of this Government is, once it’s finally done with fighting Covid. And it will be soon enough.

Ironically, it is coronavirus itself — perhaps speeded on by No 10’s rolling morass of scandals — that is to blame for a growing mission vacuum, and in more ways than one.

First, and for a second year in a row, the latest variant of Covid has derailed any new year launch of fresh ideas.

Johnson and Michael Gove’s long-awaited Levelling Up masterplan was slated for this week. But “it will get lost” in the daily debate over new restrictions, one frustrated special adviser moans.

Whether that’s true or not, it’s not the biggest scalp Covid has claimed.