The government has lost the authority to govern. What comes next is death and chaos

Government, the dictionary informs us, is a group of people with the authority to run a country.

Trouble is, the government we've got currently doesn't have the authority to run a bath. Or, indeed, the instinct, reason, or integrity required either to turn a tap in the correct direction or insert a plug in anything other than its own, quivering, rectum.

Matt Spatchcocked announced yesterday: "We're going to hunt down the virus wherever we find it." Unless it's in a Range Rover bombing up the A1, in which case the virus can go wherever the hell it likes and let the Prime Minister know later.

Then he said he would ask Treasury officials about reviewing the fines given to people who travelled during lockdown. The fines weren't issued by the Treasury, the laws requiring them weren't written by the Treasury, and all such fines are about to be appealed anyway in the most embarrassing government legal failure in living memory, in a country that has just witnessed 4 years of Brexit court drubbings for the government, but hell yeah, why not ask the Treasury. Ask the budgie, while you're at it.

On Monday, the PM's unelected chief adviser revealed he runs the country and only rarely informs the PM of his decisions. He went to work suspecting his wife had coronavirus, drove to another part of the country suspecting his entire family had coronavirus, and after isolation rushed back to work, not to run the country, but in part to edit old blog posts to make himself sound cleverer than he is, which is not very because he thought revealing all this would improve things.

Call me a picky, Remoaning, Leftie campaigning journalist if you like, but does any of that sound remotely like authority , to you?

Authority is a Prime Minister who does the coronavirus briefing every day, as Thatcher, Major, Brown and May would all have done, not tell us we should be grateful he's managed one on the weekend.

Authority is a government which puts the national interest above protecting the interests of someone prepared to drive 2 tons of metal at 70mph for 5 hours, despite fearing he was going blind.

Authority is when someone who markets himself as a 3D chess player, capable of strategising several years ahead of everyone else, says he can spot a mistake when it's staring back at him in the Mirror. And a strategist, incidentally, would resign today knowing full well he could be back after a lucrative couple of years doing something else, in time for the next election.

Authority , the same dictionary states, is the power to give orders, make decisions, and enforce them. The government we don't have is claiming an authority it flushed down the pan, by its own admission, in late March.

Had the saga of Dominic Cummings' lockdown-busting trip to Durham - with a diversion to Barnard Castle to check his eyesight, coincidentally on his wife's birthday - been published a month earlier, there would be no discussion about resignation. He would have been flung from the Downing Street window into a baying mob of political reporters thirsting for his blood, because at the time the virus was at its peak and killing 1,000 people a day.

It was not published, because there was no confirmation. But Downing Street knew - officials knew, the PM knew, they all knew the police had written it down, and journalists had made the first formal approaches to spokesmen to see if the rumours were true. He should, if the PM followed his instincts, like any reasonable person, and acted with integrity, been quietly let go before the story exploded, damaging not only the PM's credibility but his ability to protect the nation's health, too.

But Boris Johnson's instinct is always to lie, even when being caught out is as predictable as a north-west bloom of Covid-19 after letting Anfield host a match. His reason is usually confined to wondering if he'll get away with it, and his integrity has yet to be spotted with its trousers on.

So for weeks, No10 let the bomb tick. They denied the story was true, told the police to issue fines, allowed children and pensioners to die alone, ordered citizens to stay indoors on sunny days, and to wave at granny through the window while small children who didn't understand cried for a cuddle with nan.

And Johnson knew all of this, from the beginning of April. Cummings knew he'd be called on to give an explanation as to why, if his wife can't drive, she was still content to allow him to operate heavy machinery half-blind and plonk their son in the back seat. He met and said hello to strangers who he knew had recognised him. He knew there were reports of his appearance in Durham on social media, and police had spoken to his father. And they instinctively said nothing at all about it, before presenting excuses that could not withstand 10 seconds of scrutiny.

If these two were asked to run a bath, Cummings would be trying to out-think the tap by turning it widdershins and BoJo would be having a quickie in the airing cupboard. When you hollered up the stairs if the bath was ready, they'd both yell "NEARLY!" And, on hearing footsteps on the stairs, they'd start shouting about how well the tap was being operated, and anyone who thought otherwise was entirely wrong about Brexit.

In this scenario, you'd look at the bone-dry bath, and think "that tap has not been run". You'd look at the man who's been rubbing himself on the towels and think "you're not helping". And you'd look at the weirdo in the shellsuit and tell him to get the hell out of your house.

The government is trying to pretend none of this happened. That soon lockdown will ease further, that you can shop for clothes, sit in a beer garden, or have friends over for a barbecue.

But it's as mad as the rest of their instructions. We can shop for clothes but not touch them; we can sit in a beer garden but not approach the bar; our friends can come over for a barbecue, but they'll have to s*** in the hedge because they're not allowed to use the toilet.

You can now shop with your mum, but not have a cup of tea with her. You can picnic with your parents one at a time, but if they picnic simultaneously, in the same park, you must stay away.

In a pandemic, even one that has been long predicted and prepared-for, there will be inconsistencies which reasonable people must interpret for themselves. So it is odd that we're in a pandemic the government de-prepared for, denied was happening, and in which the inconsistencies may be reinterpreted only by unreasonable people entirely lacking in common sense.

At the start of this pandemic, most of the country supported the government and expressed sympathy for those running it. That goodwill has not leaked, so much as been spaffed up the wall by a PM and government bizarrely certain of their charisma and rightness even though it can be expressed, these days, only in negative amounts.

It is now a government that does not, cannot, govern. It has no credibility, no authority, and no power. The police and the church rail at it, the people ignore it, and the coronavirus will be having a whale of a time, the bill for which we will be presented with in another 3 weeks or so.

The lack of PPE cost lives. The shoddy PPE bought in a panic cost lives. Ordering hospitals to discharge patients with covid-symptoms, the "protective ring" of a wilful blind spot for care homes, the decision to stop testing because it was too much hard work, all cost lives - more than 60,000, at the current count, and all due to unforced errors rooted in their own, terrible strategy.

But the decision to protect their chief strategist, and to propagate the logic of the madhouse, will cost more. The spike we may see in a few weeks will be dwarfed by that we can expect in winter, when the government will tell us once again to lockdown and we tell it to get f***ed.

They will blame us for not doing as we're told. I blame the people doing the telling. They have undermined themselves, destroyed a nation's trust, and created a hole we are all at risk of falling into. If the strategic aim was chaos, Cummings has absolutely killed it.