Boris Johnson’s cycle ride to the Olympic Park on Sunday has provoked the full gamut of responses, from those praising his desire to keep fit on two wheels, to others simply wondering how he found the time when they haven’t washed their hair since schools closed.
The incident also resulted in some interesting thought experiments, as politicians, senior police officers – and everyone else – struggled to answer two key questions: is seven miles actually seven miles?
And how on earth do you define ‘local’?
Speaking on BBC Breakfast policing minister Kit Malthouse MP wanted to clear things up.
He insisted people must not “stretch the rules”. But then went on to say that whether seven miles was to be considered local or not “depends on where you are”.
“Seven miles will be local in different areas,” he added.
The rules, said Met police commissioner Dame Cressida Dick, were not clear to the public, and even to some of her own officers.
No wonder, perhaps, that most readers who spoke to the Guardian about the episode responded with little more than a faintly irritated shrug.
For charity worker Paul it was a “non story”, for engineer James, “a storm in a teacup”, while designer Paul worried it might put further restrictions on outdoor exercise.
“Riding a bike is one of the few carefree, guilt-free, socially responsible things you can do in this shit-show of a time,” he wrote. “And now I feel like I need to be on a metaphorical elastic band attached to my flat.”
But some were perplexed by the fact that Johnson had very local access to Hyde Park and St James’ Park – but chose to go much further afield.
Teacher Christine asked if Johnson couldn’t have cycled in the 42-acre private gardens of Buckingham Palace – with its tennis court, lake and two-and-a-half miles of gravel paths – where the prime minister has jogged and walked his dog since being given permission by the queen during the first lockdown.
“He just felt like going somewhere else,” she wrote.
And which parent contemplating their 534th walk past the hairdressers, betting shop and cordoned off bandstand, recalcitrant children in tow, could not sympathise with that?
Christine added: “Local for him is Green Park or St James Park. I wish people would stop cutting him so much slack – he has eroded public confidence.”
Others felt the trip was yet another example of those in authority stretching the rules made for others to follow.
“Personal responsibility only applies to the public when they are being blamed by the government but never applies to Conservatives or the prime minister,” said Paramdeep, 27.
“Johnson certainly should be on his bike, out of Number 10 – this country deserves so much better.”
Eric in rural Oxfordshire, wondered if the controversy merely compounded the damage done during the first lockdown, when Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings bent lockdown rules to drive 264 miles from his London home to Durham, despite having had symptoms of coronavirus, before going on a family trip to Barnard Castle, ostensibly to test his eyesight.
“It is well understood and accepted now that the Dominic Cummings scandal changed the calculus in everyone’s mind from how do I defeat the virus, to can I find a loophole in the lockdown rules,” he said.
Yet there were significant numbers of commentators who suggested that an enthusiastic cyclist prime minister, trying to lose weight was exactly the role model the times required.
“It’s good to hear prime minister @BorisJohnson has been cycling in London. @PHE_uk encourage cycling as a way to protect your physical and mental health,” tweeted the London Cycling Campaign. Linking to a story about the incident from the Guardian, former Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable called the report “unbelievably petty” and went as far as to ask what the publication “had against cycling” – the question of a man who has clearly not seen the amount of Lycra on display in the Guardian’s London office on any pre-pandemic morning.
There could have been another decent reason other than exercise that the prime minister took the cycle ride, suggested a Boris Johnson parody Twitter account, which tweeted: “Well, that was useful. I now know I don’t need to wear glasses after all.”