Even Boris Johnson’s Red Wall MPs no longer trust him.
These were the Tories who captured Labour’s heartland seats in the North and Midlands, and became the PM’s most loyal supporters in Parliament.
Now they find it necessary to form their own trade union to strong-arm their boss into keeping his word on levelling up their constituencies.
The signs are not promising. Mr Johnson mishandled this pandemic from the start, but especially so in the regions these MPs represent.
The PM promised to follow the science, yet put much of the North under local lockdown rules he is unable to produce the science to justify.
Now he plans even stricter measures without consulting the local leaders who know just how damaging to businesses and jobs these new restrictions will be.
Where the gentle skills of the diplomat are required, the PM resorts to the jackboot. Where persuasion should be the order of the day, he rules by diktat.
As Angela Rayner tells the Sunday Mirror, if the South had to suffer what the North is going through, Mr Johnson and his Cabinet cronies would soon do something about it.
And today the Sunday Mirror can show just how right she is.
Mr Johnson and many of his ministers now have higher infection rates in their own constituencies than northern cities did when the PM locked them down in July. Yet they have escaped similar controls.
One rule for you and another for the rest of us does not wash, Mr Johnson. Not among those in the Red Wall who only lent you their votes and can as easily take them back again.
This newspaper is not against further restrictions if they are needed to defeat this deadly virus. But they must be applied fairly and evenly. And be shown to be necessary.
Those who live in one part of the country must not be made to feel like guinea pigs to be experimented on while other areas get away scot-free.
That is creating a new North-South divide at a time when the nation most needs to be united.
The PM must represent the interests of the whole UK. Not just those who sit with him around the Cabinet table.
Prince of hope
Covid may be today’s clear and present danger, but climate change is not far behind.
So we take our hats off to Prince William for using his position to find ways of beating it.
He is fronting the £50million Earthshot to award five prizes of £1million for solutions to global warming each year until 2030.
His ambition to defeat what is the second biggest challenge of our age next to corona will inspire young people to get stuck in.
The Duke of Cambridge is not just our future king. He is also doing his bit to ensure our planet has a future.
