Opinion | Carrie Lam could have addressed the five demands in a speech for the ages. Instead, she gave us a damp squib

It must be a struggle to find a word for a leader who claims a 97 per cent success rate in her first two years in office when the city is reeling from its worst political crisis ever. Delusional? A better word is leitei. The literal translation is “off the ground” but in Cantonese the word means out of touch with reality.

Just how out of touch Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor is can best be measured in tear gas, rubber bullets, protests – peaceful and violent – and hundreds of young people who face years in jail for joining an uprising now in its fourth month.

Yet two days after radical protesters trashed the city, she boasted she had succeeded in achieving nearly all of the 500 policy initiatives she tasked herself with in the past two years.

But the reality is Hongkongers are not living in nirvana. They are living in a hellhole she created. Even teenagers are throwing petrol bombs, clashing with the police and singing songs of freedom. Lam’s approval rating has plunged to levels unseen before.

Yesterday, she tried again to make Hong Kong a happy place by using her annual policy speech to announce another 220 initiatives. Opposition legislators heckled her, forcing Lam to deliver the speech via video.