THIS week Boris Johnson has finally decided to talk with the devolved governments. Things really must be bad.

These are the very conversations he has deliberately avoided, continuing the established practice of marginalising and ignoring Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales and ensuring that we were all very much in the dark until bombshell press releases hit the news – the extent of the power grab in the UK Government’s internal market plan, the threat to the integrity of the Good Friday Agreement, the very cornerstones of Stormont, the Senedd and Holyrood.

But desperate times have called for Johnson to take desperate measures, with pleas made to each of the other three nations ahead of the Cobra meeting of yesterday to “reiterate our commitment to working together with the devolved administrations as one United Kingdom in response to rising infection rates across the UK”.

“Reiterate” and “work together” are words issued apparently in all sobriety by this stumbling Prime Minister, swaying at the despatch box in an non-existent wind. This is the reprobate who has shut out any input and shut down any collaborative opportunities with the devolved nations in this disunited kingdom.

And not just since Covid arrived on our shores. Ever since David Cameron, the day after the 2014 referendum, made his petty announcement of English Votes for English Laws and then failed to fight the case for staying in Europe, devolution has been under attack and shoved unceremoniously

to the sidelines.

This new communication is quite a turn-around from a government that has spent the last few months desperately try to hoard power at Number 10, grabbing and pick-pocketing powers from not just the devolved nations but from English local government by slashing budgets and diverting cash. Direct rule under the cover of Brexit. And now under the cover of Covid-19.

One very obvious example of this power-hungry, “Sue, Grabbit and Runne” approach can be illustrated in the less than subtle statements from Scotland’s anti-Secretary, Alister “Union” Jack. He seems to take delight in upping Johnson’s reverse-devo ante, berating the Scots, and indeed all three devolved nations, for having the audacity to set their own rules about the global pandemic and “muddling the message” on Covid.

If there is one single thing that Johnson and co need no additional help with it is the art of muddled messages. Go out and eat but stay at home, get back to work but only with six people and one other household, get your mask on except when you are allowed to take it off. It is all as clear as the mud under the crowded riverboat parties which have been taking place all of this reckless summer on the River Thames.

But Jack never misses an opportunity to attempt to put his own countryfolk back in our box. I can just imagine the kind of cosy chats the anti-Scottish Secretary and his colleagues might be having as they finish their Covid-exempt grouse shoot on an early autumn weekend – “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile those pesky natives” they cry as they swirl a peaty whisky in their heavy cut-glass tumblers, post another animal carnage.

However, in such unprecedented times, these patriarchal attitudes don’t cut the mustard on their English roast beef. Now, it looks like Scotland is needed after all, and Wales and Northern Ireland. We are there to provide a four-country shield against Boris’s very English cock-up. We are all in this together – yes, up to our eyes in the excrement of a completely collapsing policy.

The devolved nations’ general strength of messaging thus far on Covid has highlighted Johnson and his cronies’ weaknesses. Lacking in empathy, humanity or indeed the famous boasted “common sense”, they haven’t been able to cobble together a credible response. It has been one long litany of blundering, making the UK and Boris responsible for old Blighty’s global reputation as a total joke and the eye-watering numbers of tragic and early deaths.

However, as the devolved nations engage in their first Cobra meeting since May they should beware of geeks bearing gifts. Their home messaging has been much better but the policy has been almost as bad. And while the English presentation has been the responsibility of bumbling Boris, the pitiful UK-led proposals are the work of a bunch of experts without a single epidemic control professional. Among the bloated Sage network as I understand it, no-one has actual hands-on experience of managing control of a real pandemic.

It is time someone said it outright. Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance are about as useful as Pinky and Perky in delivering messages and their scientific advice has been demonstrated to be very sadly lacking in many critical respects. They have been unerringly accurate in forecasting the past!

As a direct result, across all four home nations the people who have been toasting the summer on pubs at home or beaches abroad are about to pay the price in an autumn of renewed lockdown restrictions.

These “experts” who suggested (or conveniently acquiesced) in the madness of claiming to keep a highly infectious virus under control with the pubs open should be given their “counter intuitive” jotters.

And that applies to the Scottish ones who have spent far, far too much time parroting total insanity from the south. I fear that yesterday’s efforts in Westminster and Holyrood sounded both desperate and sadly lacking in clarity. Pubs are now to close at 10pm. Well, that will make all the difference with the positive test rate soaring in Scotland to 7.6%!

Yesterday’s Cobra meeting was only called as the devolved nations have been hustling Johnson on it since last week and the UK pandemic strategy is now in total disarray. The London Government is rattled – hence Monday’s politician (and question) free briefing from the “experts” as a warm-up act for yesterday. In other words, let’s spread the blame.

It is simply not true as disgracefully suggested in briefings in both Edinburgh and London that all countries are failing to control the virus – look south to New Zealand, east to Vietnam, north to the tiny Faroes or west to Uruguay.

Of course every country has issues and everyone has tried but some have won through, at least thus far. If we are looking for wisdom then look to those who have succeeded, not to the failures of London rule, which is very far from OK.