Only this government could miss the open goal of free school meals

Will nobody think of the prime ministers? Everyone has a story of deprivation that has stuck with them during this pandemic, and mine is one of a selection offered by “friends” of Boris Johnson, who were so concerned about his household finances a month ago that they went to the Daily Mail about it. We pick up the scene at a private gathering for some of these friends at the PM’s country retreat, with Johnson holding court: “‘Enjoy it,’ he said before bellowing down the long dining table at Chequers: ‘Eat every scrap. I have to pay for this you know!’”

Like me, your tears may have spontaneously liquefied at multiple such reports in recent months. If you missed them, let me summarise: a man who applied for a job which pays almost £160,000 a year with hugely substantial benefits is apparently feeling unable to manage on almost £160,000 a year with hugely substantial benefits. Yet this is only the half of it. “The food wasn’t even very good,” Johnson’s friend told the Mail, “but the real tragedy is that Boris can’t really afford to entertain on any kind of scale. I am not going to accept another invitation because it seems unfair that he should fork out to feed me when he hasn’t got any money.”

Take a moment. I know I just did.

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And so to the full spectrum shitshow over free school meals, now decried by everyone from the government’s own social mobility commission to its own MPs, albeit not enough for many of them to vote against it. The spectacle of Marcus Rashford running rings round any number of cabinet ministers is so painfully Manichean it has the flavour of a Nike advert, like that one in the Colosseum where Eric Cantona had to score the winner against Lucifer.

At Rashford’s age – 22 – Johnson’s chief interest in food distribution was limited to which bread roll to chuck first at a pleading restaurant owner. As a member of a university dining club that routinely trashed eating establishments for the fun of it, Johnson was arrested along with other Bullingdon inadequates over the smashing of a restaurant window with a pot plant. You can only imagine the condemnation – probably at a ministerial level – that would these days be headed the way of football if a 22-year-old player was found to have done the same. And yet, this and many other incidents like it have proved absolutely no impediment to becoming prime minister.

If it weren’t over something so deadly serious, there would be deep comedy in the now daily spectacle of Conservative politicians struggling to find the right words to deploy about an immensely impressive young black man whose day job is being extremely good at something that people actually like. Rashford scoring a stunning 87th minute winner against Paris Saint-Germain last week then coming straight off the pitch to tweet about child poverty feels like a Tory anxiety dream, the sort of psychiatric hazing exercise you have to pass before you get to green-light a bent property deal or shag a troubled 18-year-old researcher.

Boris Johnson says he “salutes” Marcus Rashford. Nadhim Zahawi, who just voted against the job Marcus Rashford is doing, says “Marcus Rashford is doing an incredible job”. Matt Hancock says he’s “inspired” by Marcus Rashford. Which is nice. I mean, Charles Manson was inspired by the Beatles. It’s always important to remember that Matt Hancock kicked off this pandemic by using the heights of the Downing Street podium to declaim some cheap, easy and ludicrously irrelevant point about how Premier League stars needed to take a pay cut. Hancock, who should have taken a 100% pay cut months ago, is now excruciatingly reduced to playing nice. His interviews are so beaten it’s like he’s had trials for the Lib Dems.

There is increasingly vocal and widespread resistance to the school meals policy and the effect of the government’s coronavirus response on already deprived areas of the north, even from the new crop of Tory MPs, many of whom didn’t expect to win in last December’s general election and consequently appear to have received the sort of rigorous vetting you might expect to have been lavished on a Ukip councillor or 1970s kids’ TV presenter. And yet, Downing Street would like it known they are very relaxed about it all. According to what one No 10 figure told Politico, the new MPs have simply been spooked by negative coverage and will soon “toughen up”.

Let’s hope they attain the toughness of serious elders such as Mansfield MP Ben Bradley. I find Bradley pretty mesmeric. He comes off as the government’s dating coach, negging the voters while wearing a smirk usually seen on guys who can explain how, technically, paying nightclub entry counts as consent. In real life, Bradley spent the weekend agreeing with tweets suggesting that free school meal vouchers went straight to the “crack den [and] brothel”, adding “that’s what FSM vouchers in the summer effectively did”.

He somewhat belatedly deleted this tweet on the basis that “the context wasn’t as clear as I thought it was”. Perhaps someone in Downing Street reminded Ben that they’re supposed to be looking like they give a toss about mental health these days? Addictions are not the most incomprehensible response to a range of despairs exacerbated by these times, and sneering in this brutal and crass way about them is a handy reminder of the difference between what some politicians nod along to and what they mean in practice. “This week is mental health awareness week and it’s really important that everyone feels comfortable talking about their mental health,” Ben was trilling at the requisite moment last year. “I’m proud to be part of a government that has made it equal with physical health.” An absolute badge-kisser, there.

Related: Why is the government being so pig-headed about free school meals? | Gaby Hinsliff

Where will Johnson’s latest unforced error go? Some people stockpile loo roll or hand sanitiser, this government stockpiles U-turns. Most of their policies have the half-life of a particularly unstable radioactive isotope. It’s explicitly a government of superforecasters who can’t see up to next Friday. Messaging is now so Dadaist that in the same week that they’re fighting Rashford they leak the tale that they’re planning to abolish quarantine for City dealmakers and hedgefunders, with one government source reasoning to the Sunday Times: “It seems ridiculous that people who are coming to the UK for five or six meetings in a day and then flying out are forced to quarantine, especially when most of them come in private jets and have a chauffeur-driven car.” Hate to blindside them with another spoiler, but is that the thing which truly seems ridiculous?

You expect politicians to have been picked last for football and there’s no shame in that. Our trouble is that this crop of politicians were picked last for politics. This cabinet aren’t the reserves or even the thirds – they’re the ninths or 10ths or something, having been picked solely for their loyalty to Brexit, a project successive governments have spent the past four years proving is like deliberately relegating yourself to League One. That the pandemic music has stopped with a team of this calibre in charge really is the cruellest of timings, and, on current evidence, is only likely to get crueller.

• Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist