Coronavirus diary, Saturday 23 May

If I were a cartoonist, not a reporter, today's cartoon would feature the Prime Minister as a hapless juggler, desperately trying to keep a bundle of balls in the air.... school opening, care homes, the economy, travellers' quarantine testing, chiefs going AWOL, immigration, Brexit. Quite a handful. No wonder he is dropping so many. 

Admittedly, they are tricky problems to handle but surely there should be greater deftness and ability from the country's leader. 

The problem that blights not just the Prime Minister but most of his cabinet and advisers seems to be a total regard for logic, basic common sense.

Take the latest example, the quarantining of travellers coming to Britain. It is an idea that should never have been put on the runway, patently impossible to control. Britain has been letting in, if not exactly welcoming, hundreds of thousands of people a day from all over the world with mininimum precautions. It antagonises the stricken aviation industry and people looking forward to a break in the monotony of lockdown. Even Italy and other countries including Greece and Portugal are relaxing their travel rules to save their tourism industry.

But the Home Secretary, Prity Patel, ignores all this, stubbornly stumbling ahead. Those who have to, or dare to travel, face a £1000 fine, It would need an army of enforcers to make it work.

As with the long running battle over school reopening, the government will probably have to come down to earth ignominiously.

The latest embarrassment is Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson's chief adviser, flouting the rules and making a 500 mile round trip despite the lockdown. How can that be justified if  'we are all in this together? If Mr Cummings stays, what incentive is there for anyone not to defy rules meant to save lives?

Amid all the coronavirus confusion, Brexit is back on the government's crowded agenda. Britain has already left the European Union but  negotiations for an orderly departure, on hold for months, still seem to be getting nowhere.

Mr Johnson, as stubborn as with his pandemic problems, is definite there will be no extension. 

Another ball for him to juggle.