Confusion as Boris Johnson misses press briefing

Boris Johnson hasn’t exactly had an easy time of it lately.

Whatever your views on him, most of us can agree that having a pandemic to deal with two months into the job isn’t an ideal situation. If he were a normal worker, he'd still be on probation! (If only this existed for politicians...)

Contracting coronavirus in the middle of tackling the crisis (and when his partner is pregnant) must have been pretty awful for the PM too.

All in all, people were definitely relieved when Johnson was discharged from intensive care and appeared to be on the mend.

Yesterday he said he was “raring” to get back to work having been recuperating for a few weeks, and gave a speech outside Downing Street.

But at the following day’s daily press briefing, lots of people were asking the same question:

Where’s Boris?

While the PM was battling then recovering from Covid-19, his daily briefings were led by a variety of government ministers, from Health Secretary Matt Hancock to Home Secretary Priti Patel. His stand-in Dominic Raab also made a few appearances.

But now that the PM is back, why isn’t he leading the briefings?

On Twitter, lots of people asked this question as Matt Hancock ducked and dodged his way out around questions from the press.

So many, in fact, that “Where’s Boris?” began to trend across the UK.

Throughout his career, Johnson has faced accusations of avoiding scrutiny from the press. Remember when he chickened out of being interviewed by Andrew Neil during the 2019 general election campaign by hiding in a fridge? That was fun.

So now he’s back at work, people were worried that his old habits be returning.

Thankfully, though, this turned out not to be the case.

As it turned out, the following day after this article was published, it was revealed that Johnson's partner Carrie Symonds had given birth to a healthy baby boy. So it turned out that Boris had the best possible excuse to skip the briefing and PMQs the following day. Congratulations to the happy couple.