Friends up north might find Johnson ‘all mouth and no pants’ Business News

We live in the age of empty slogans and empty mission statements. Any business, any organization is nothing unless it has a phrase that it clings to and, on closer reading, makes no sense. The government, of course, is not immune. We had ‘Get Brexit Done’, which was duly done without sufficient consideration of how leaving the EU would work in practice, certainly not as far as Northern Ireland is concerned.

However, Brexit is in the bag. We had a brutal Covid hiatus, but now that it’s waning, attention will be focused on that prime minister’s favorite mantra: ‘level it up’.

Just as ‘Get Brexit Done’ sank into a storm in the north, ‘leveling’ is its popular successor, the result of Hartlepool’s by-election testifies. But, just like its predecessor, no one has a clue how the words translate into reality.