CLOSE your eyes for a moment. Imagine one of Scotland’s leading newspapers reported that Nicola Sturgeon takes half-hour naps in her office, and is always late to meetings. What would the opposition say?
“The First Minister needs to get on with the day job!” some would exclaim. “We don’t pay you to sleep!”
“Didn’t she say she was totally focused on the coronavirus crisis,” another would chip in. “Nicola Sturgeon must get serious about Scotland’s pandemic recovery.”
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We all know what the front pages would look like. Sleepy Sturgeon. Napping Nicola. Etc etc.
Well aides told The Times that Boris Johnson regularly takes half-hour naps and is always late to his meetings, and the newspaper compared him to Winston Churchill, “Leonardo da Vinci, Bill Clinton, John F Kennedy and Salvador Dalí”.
High praise indeed. We’ll remind ourselves of that next time we need an afternoon lie-down.
“Aides say that Mr Johnson understands the restorative power of 40 winks,” the piece reads.
The article goes on: “’It would not be entirely uncommon in the diary for him to shut the door and have a kip for half an hour or so — a power executive business nap to get him ready for the rest of the day,’ said one Downing Street insider who knows the Prime Minister well.”
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Another official remarked that Johnson “keeps his own time” – with others saying no matter when a meeting begins, the Prime Minister will be 10 minutes late.
Of course Downing Street officials denied that the PM sleeps on the job. “His day is literally full of meetings. He is hard at work and has a very full and busy schedule,” they told the newspaper.
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Perhaps napping is the key to success. Nobody can work endlessly without a rest.
All we know is if this was about an SNP politician, it’s highly unlikely they’d be compared to great artists and presidents and more likely you’d see calls for them to resign trending on Twitter.
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