An awkward question hangs over the COVID-19-shuttered world of Downing Street. At his daily morning meeting, Boris Johnson, back to full duties after suffering a serious bout of the virus, recently asked who was in charge of relaxing Britain’s lockdown plan, with all of the risks and uncertainties that entails for a government. "There was just silence,” an insider told the Sunday Times newspaper. "He looked over at Mark Sedwill (his top civil servant) and asked, ‘Is it you?’ The official replied, ‘No, I think it’s you, prime minister.’”

Sedwill was right. The United Kingdom’s leader enjoys some of the strongest centralized powers in Europe — and yet, paradoxically, the man who fought so hard to gain control of his party and Britain’s destiny is reluctant to take responsibility.

Before the crisis, Johnson ruled as a near-absolute monarch, often through his eccentric but effective adviser (and key Brexit strategist) Dominic Cummings. In a tale familiar to English court politics down the centuries, the arrogant outsider resented by lesser talents has himself become a hindrance to the man he serves. Cummings, one of the architects of Britain’s lockdown, bent the rules by driving his sick wife and child 400 km to his family’s northern home where he may or may not have breached self-isolation to walk in local beauty spots.