We've had some pretty bad governments in the UK during my lifetime, but has any been so underqualified, so inept, corrupt, and nepotistic as our current one? It would be bad enough in regular times, but during a pandemic it's a tragedy.

Who knew that children go to school in September? Who guessed that hundreds of thousands of students head to universities where they – and easily shocked readers should look away – strive with every fibre of their being to mingle with each other as vigorously as they can? What clairvoyant might have predicted that, when the government offered the public cut-price restaurant meals at the taxpayers’ expense, the public would gobble them up? Or that, when the prime minister urged workers to go back to their offices and save Pret a Manger, a few brave souls would have returned to their desks and risked having “dulce et decorum est pro Pretia mori” carved on their gravestones?

Nick Cohen, The meritocracy has had its day. How else to explain the rise of Dido Harding? (The Observer)