HOW the past 12 months have affected Boris Johnson and the renewal of the Coronavirus Act were the topics discussed by columnists and contributors in the newspapers.

The Daily Mail

Henry Deedes said the Prime Minister ‘looked like a man who had suddenly felt the sharp, electric jolt of history coursing through his arteries’ on the anniversary of lockdown.

“As rheumy and wizened as an Old Testament prophet,” he said. “It was as though all the ghosts of his future had just visited him at once. Well, I suppose 126,000 deaths will do that to a Prime Minister.”

He compared Boris Johnson’s appearance with that of 12 months ago when he was ‘smooth of skin and plump of cheek’, and looked playful and boyish.

“Boris admitted the past year had been like fighting ‘in the dark’ against a ‘callous and invisible enemy’,” he said. “With a resigned tone, he added he would be dealing with the fallout from Covid for ‘as long as I live’.

“Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle offered a message of optimism, saying ‘green shoots were emerging’ and ‘hopefully we’ll have a world that comes back to all of us’. We must hope so. What a pig of a year it has been.”

The Daily Express

Ann Widdecombe said we needed some of the ‘old Boris’ back again - the one who ‘bet the nation’s housekeeping on [a single vaccine] and it crossed the finishing line leaving the rest of the field out of sight.’

“The man who is terrified of the consequences of getting it wrong needs to re-discover the man who would back liberty in the teeth of the massed ranks of doom-mongers and nay-sayers and urge his charger into the fray,” she said. “Instead he is cowed and timorous.

“It is time to be bold if the success of the vaccination programme is to mean anything at all and time to let it save not only lives but our economy, our liberty and our sanity. It is time to face the enemy, not hide from it.”

The Independent

Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said Boris Johnson would be asking MPs to give his government a ‘blank cheque to reduce everyone’s rights and freedoms for another six months’ when he asks them to back the Coronavirus Act today. (THURS).

“No MP should vote for that,” he said. “It’s not about lockdown, or quarantine, or the requirement to wear face-coverings. Nor is the vote about furlough, or financial support for self-employed people – no matter what Matt Hancock claims. “

He said it was about renewing a whole multitude of powers the government awarded itself in a panic back at the start of the pandemic.

“Liberal Democrats have always been clear that our freedoms must be fully restored as soon as this crisis is over,” he said. “Handing ministers a blank cheque for another six months is unnecessary and unjustified, so we will be voting against the renewal.”