ow maddening to learn the Nigerian president has appointed a dead man to run a government agency. This is what happens when you’re in a global procurement race for resources. If the UK had only acted quicker, that guy could have chaired our public inquiry into the handling of the coronavirus. Of course, we already boast an estimated 45,000 of what our insanely euphemistic government might describe as “resources”, in the form of those who have … gone to a better place, is it? Been selected for immortality? Ascended to virus Valhalla? Either way, it’s great to see the government ramping up the positivity, now that returning prime minister Boris Johnson has replaced broken Pez dispenser Dominic Raab. Judging by the prime minister’s Thursday press conference, you’ll hear a lot more emphasis on the fact that the NHS has not been overwhelmed, and a lot less emphasis on those of our loved ones who may have … been overwhelmed. The UK is on course to have the worst continental death toll, which you should expect the government to characterise as winning the Euros. The one thing it’s hard to understand is the supposed crisis in fruit- and veg-picking, given how many people have recently gone to live on a farm. If that dead Nigerian can’t whitewash all this for us, then, the inquiry is the perfect one to be chaired by his lordship Alan Sugar. Like me, you probably prefer to get all your news analysis/conspiracy theories/desktop email phones from this booster-seated biz-troll – so you’ll be delighted by the fact that Sugar has really leaned in to a self-appointed consultancy role during the virus crisis. Alas, defects in our political system, compared with that of the United States, mean the route from the Apprentice boardroom to Downing Street remains obscure. Though let’s be encouraged that Lord Sugar has, in his time, been made a business tsar by both Labour and Conservative governments. He is currently pushing his theory that the media should not ask the government “negative” questions, but instead promote “hope, optimism and faith”. In one sense, it’s understandable. Alan lives what passes for his professional life surrounded by misplaced positivity. He heads up a show where people spend 12 weeks being exposed as obnoxiously unemployable on primetime national television, then mark their exit by saying “Thank you for the opportunity”. For the next series, I’m sure he’ll take a leaf out of his own book and retire his negative “You’re fired” catchphrase. I’d go with something like “You’re downsized” or “You’re being offered a universal credit opportunity”, or “You’re being made assistant editor (of something in brackets)”. For those worrying Sugar himself might be somehow downsized for his other contribution – posting dangerous misinformation and refusing to delete it until many hours after it was revealed as a hoax – please don’t be. He can never be “let go” by the BBC as Apprentice frontman, because there is simply no other business visionary so desperate for attention that they would give large amounts of their own money, every year, to one of 15 missing links between the vegetable and mineral kingdoms, chosen simply for their ability to make hatewatchable television. Sugar’s job couldn’t be safer if he was a funeral director. (Having said all that – is Richard Branson soon to be “a lot freer”, “timewise”? I hope not. The last thing Lord Suralan could handle is the emergence of a peer group of even one.) Happily, the government is obliging his desire for taking the positives. Johnson’s rose-tinted address on Thursday reminded me of the speech at the end of Tom Stoppard’s play Jumpers, where a distinctly immoral man looks on the bright side with lines such as: “Millions of children grow up without suffering deprivation, and millions, while deprived, grow up without suffering cruelties, and millions, while deprived and cruelly treated, none the less grow up.” That is, naturally, 45,000 times better written than the fare served up by Johnson. “We are coming through the peak,” he wibbled yesterday, “or rather we are coming over what could have been a vast peak, as though we have been going through some huge Alpine tunnel. And we can now see the sunlight and the pastures ahead of us … ” Ah, sunlight. Mountains. You may recognise these from such Johnson metaphors as “the sunlit uplands” of Brexit. Is he saying we’re finally in the sunlit uplands? No, hang on – these pastures are very much not up. Are they the sunlit downlands? And we access them via a tunnel over a semi-vast peak, yes? Could you give me directions toward your point, prime minister, as I’m afraid Google Maps doesn’t seem to be working at this altitude/depth? The one thing no one ever says is: “Who writes this shit for him?” Such metaphors are all very much “model’s own”. It’s an almost unique form of self-confidence. Once you become actual prime minister, and have a paid talent pool to draw upon, most holders of the position get themselves a speechwriter. But not Johnson. In terms of an individual refusing to take advantage of the vast wherewithal on offer, I can’t think of a more horrifying example of anyone thinking they can do a better job themselves. Not even Celine Dion’s fashion sense. Johnson’s refusal to get himself a (prose) stylist means the nation now is going to have to board these verbal funiculars at 5pm daily, and hope they cling to the traction cable tightly enough to deposit us at the … but no. Sorry, I can’t do this. Maybe next week. For now, let’s play out with the prime minister’s assertion that being on course for one of the worst death tolls in the world means we’ve “avoid[ed] the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world”. What can you say? Other than: thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.