AS expected, lying lockdown party animal Boris Johnson's Operation Save Big Dog didn’t exactly go to plan. "A dog's dinner,” snarled SNP House of Commons leader Ian Blackford.

However, despite a possible leadership challenge and an expectation that former pub landlady, now Cabinet Office official, Sue Gray will call time on the PM after she concludes her investigation into the booze ups at Number 10, it increasingly looks likely that the Chief Musher might have done just enough to save his Teflon-coated skin.

Partly this is because Johnson has announced that he intends to lift all Covid restrictions from next Thursday in England, and also remove all existing and clearly damaging emergency legislation by March 24 or earlier.

After two long crippling years of living under dystopian lockdowns, learning to live with Covid would be the way forward for England.

He was rounded upon and rightly savaged by the Pork Pie Plotters and many within his own pack, before, during and after Prime Minister's Questions.

This saw scenes of mayhem with the baying hounds from the opposition kennels howling and slavering with righteous glee, especially when unhappy plotter Christian Wakeford, in a clearly choreographed move, upped sticks and scrambled over to Labour.

This emboldened Labour leader Sir Kier Starmer to discover his bark, demanding that Mr Johnson should quit saying his "absurd and unreliable defences" of No 10 parties were unravelling.

Crufts this was not, and the attacks from within increased in intensity when enraged Tory David Davis mauled the wounded PM, by reminding him of the historic statement used by Leopold Amery in 1940 which brought about the downfall of the then-useless PM, Neville Chamberlain.

"You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go."

A view echoed around the House and the majority of homes in the UK.

But, as we all know, a big dog with a massive maw is at its most dangerous when cornered and shouldn’t be written off, especially when that untrainable feral beast is called Boris.

In a last gasp Machiavellian move, dripping in hypocrisy and double standards, the bloodied Big Dog bit back with a calculated, unscrupulous but universally welcome announcement which may just pull him out of the bear pit and, for the moment at least, save his car crash of a career.

Plan A would return and Covid curbs and restrictions in England would be lifted from Jan 26. The tasty meat on the bone here being that scientists now believe the Omicron wave has peaked and have finally accepted that this variant is nowhere near as deadly as first feared.

Mandatory and completely useless Covid certification (vaccine passports) would be dropped, as would the wearing of face muzzles in indoor public settings, including secondary school classrooms. People would also no longer be advised to work from home.

Even better, the UK government intends to end the legal requirement for people who test positive for Covid to self-isolate, and that all restrictions and emergency legislation will be lifted by or before March 24.

Health Secretary Sajid Javid said: "We must learn to live with Covid in the same way we live with flu".

I agree but will the devolved governments, in particular our own over-cautious Scottish Government?

This week, Scotland had its own cause for celebration when the FM announced that due to the pandemic now taking a “more positive course" many of the restrictions would be lifted. This includes social distancing rules, the shutdown of indoor contact sports, the closure of nightclubs and table service in hospitality venues.

All very welcome but these disproportionate damaging rules should never have been brought in in the first place.

Will the FM now follow suit, and drop the remaining, very damaging restrictions, including the discredited vaccine passport scheme, mandatory muzzle wearing and install consumer confidence by encouraging people back to work.

Will Nicola Sturgeon finally remove all emergency Covid powers beyond March? I hope so as they are our very own dog's dinner.

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