I think I have said this before, but I am going to say it again anyway. That is because some things are worth repeating. Others are also worth preparing for. The possibility that support for this government might collapse quite soon is one that fits both categories.
The idea that the Conservatives are one united happy family is being laid bare, often, at present. The various ‘reform groups' (European, Northern and now Covid) are very clearly determined to push through policies that are little short of insane.
Brexit is already a disaster that is, to Johnson's enormous relief, temporarily hidden behind Covid and the EU's apparent failure to role out vaccines as fast as the UK. That, though, is a temporary phenomenon. The crisis over Northern Ireland is not. Nor are the long term trading implications. The failure of this policy is going to become apparent.
The Northern issue is being kept quiet, squashed by Covid. But Covid might, in any event, be enough to put paid to Johnson. The bleatings of the largely overlapping memberships of these Groups make clear where they stand. For the Covid denying wing of the Tories there is no data that can over-rule dates on ending Covid lockdown. There are only dates that, in their opinion, need to be be brought forward.
Their claims are intensely simplistic. Covid has been beaten, they say, by the vaccination programme. Covid does not like the summer, they add. And international travel is fine if people have a lateral flow test. Anyway, track and trace works because any private sector activity that has that much money thrown at it must work. Meanwhile don't cause transmissions and children can't take Covid home to their parents. The list goes on, and on. All such statements are followed by the call to ‘reopen sooner'.
That appetite for reopening is enormous, I am aware. I had a coffee and cake out at a fairly remote bird reserve not far from my home yesterday, and it felt like an enormous treat. Of course we are frustrated. Johnson knows that, but he might also have made a very big mistake. He has over-egged expectation. Worse, he may not be able to deliver. If he fails the sense of disappointment will turn to anger.
There are good reasons to think he has got his policy wrong, again. Case numbers are up this weekend. School reopening has almost certainly significantly increased R. The evidence is already clear in Scotland. Children are transmitting the virus.
The idea that the virus has been beaten is also wrong. A different virus is being tackled now. If the French variant, which does not show up in testing, becomes commonplace there are even more problems.
And summer does not stop the virus. Brazil provides horrid evidence of that, with the healthcare system there now in a state of collapse.
With many foreign holiday destinations now heading back for lockdown the chance that reopening for summer holidays in the sun will happen is very remote indeed. Which, in my opinion, and quite bizarrely, will be the real tipping point. The sense that almost any liberty can be taken away but the one that gives the ‘right' to time in the sun is hard to fathom so I just take it as likely to be a fact.
In all this our so-called ‘great' vaccination programme is also beginning to stall. If there isn't enough vaccine to supply second doses a half vaccinated population is a breeding ground for new, vaccine resistant, variants that may turn this supposed success into the groundwork for something much more serious.
Add it all together and there are more than enough possibilities to suggest that if data is really going to drive what happens then the chance of full reopening is very small.
My current suspicion is that the likelihood that schools will stay open is not that high.
As for foreign holidays, and maybe even staycations, they may not be too likely either.
And if any of those things happen the apparent vaccine euphoria of the last few weeks may wear off very quickly indeed.
Could Johnson survive a failed reopening? Would school closures (and some are already happening, of course) tip the balance? Or will it be cancelled holidays? Might that ‘coiled spring' of the pent up desire to spend, spend, spend that Andy Haldane at the Bank of England thinks exists be released in drunken anger and not euphoric revelling? I think it at least possible that it might be.
And what then? Has a supine Opposition a better plan? Is the SNP ready to exploit this (although it is likely to come just a little too late to help it in May)? Could we see an emergent political alternative, born of both necessity in the face of anger at the failure of a government that had yet again got Covid wrong, and a complete loss of confidence in all its promises? And what might that political alternative offer?
Surely not more of the same? That, surely, would not be possible given that any non-Tory alternative is impossible without the SNP? So if its inclusion in any alternative (and Sturgeon remains a rare winner on Covid) guarantees that fundamental constitutional reform would be on the table would Labour agree? Or would it rather, Ramsay MacDonald like, prefer a Unionist national government that would in reality perpetuate Tory power?
Effort expended on such speculation may be wasted, of course. Covid might really have been beaten. But I think the likelihood of that very small. In that case I sincerely hope that some thinking is being done. This year has a long way to go as yet. I fear that there will be many more unnecessary deaths before it is over. But if that is going to be the case surely a plan is required, and it cannot be yet more Johnson. What is it to be?
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On Radio 4 this morning all I heard was a story about an 80 year old woman booking a Greek holiday in May wondering if it is going to be cancelled or not. Her concern was that being 80 she did not know how much time she had left. She said she did not know whether having been vaccinated and having had her second jab if she would still be an asymptomatic carrier of it.
Has she not been reading the news? It’s all very well thinking that we’ve got Covid under some sort of control here but why would you assume it was safe to go on holiday elsewhere? I think we’ve got another year of at least severe disruption.
My brother has made as good a recovery as he can so far from Covid thank goodness and avoided hospital but is assessing the damage. He’s done with inter-continental truck driving.
His experience of Heathrow is instructive. He told me that of all the places in England (and he drove nearly everywhere from Ireland to the UK and into France before BREXIT), Heathrow was the most lax about Covid working which surprised him given that it is a passenger and freight terminal that never really closed as far as he could see during 2020.
Covid will endure because people all too easily justify making exceptions for themselves or this or that – and for Covid that’s a great day at the office – a chance to spread and mutate.
We see more publicity about when restrictions are going to be lifted or not than about how Covid actually works (it’s ability to mutate and adapt to its environment in order to persist). I remember in early 2020 Channel 4 News interviewing a scientist who remarked that he’d never seen anything as nasty and even clever as this bug and he was right.
At the end of the day though let no one be in any doubt that it might not be Covid that’s the actual killer: it’s human stupidity and indecision as well.
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Another real problem we have is a generally sick society which is in pretty poor state of health. This bug is bad but its able to thrive because of the poor shape we are in as a whole. I recently saw a stat that over 50 % of US citizens are either obese or have an underlying medical condition. I’d guess the UK is not far behind. This disease has been able to wreak way more death than it should have had we had more a fit and healthy population.
Public health needs to be another issue at the top of our agenda when we do get out of this bind.
‘Underlying medical condition’ means alive after a certain age, I think it’s fair to say
I admit that I am lucky to so far have nothing of concern
Apart from being a pain in the neck to some people
You could also comment on the fact that govt is not really that bothered about the people who have died, or the ones that may yet die.
Quite simply: They are not really in the social class that govt cares about.
many in govt will be looking at the numbers who have died in the USA, and hoping…
You should also consider that the cry is starting to find where the blame can be laid. And the inevitability of that blame, in large part, being laid at the door of the NHS.
“I had a coffee and cake out at a fairly remote bird reserve not far from my home yesterday”
So flouting the lockdown restriction to stay at home unless you have a “reasonable excuse, such as to shop for basic necessities, to provide care, to exercise, or to work.”
I suppose you’re one of those people who thinks restrictions are “necessary but for other people, not me”.
I travelled less than 5 miles and walked more than 5 miles
That is within the Cobid restrictions, you will find
It is really shocking how, 12 months into this pandemic, so few people know what the restrictions actually say. Indicative, I suppose, of the law being somewhat vague and amended so many times, and the official guidance often being at variance with the actual law.
I suspect the government and the police quite like having vague laws with uncertain boundaries, that can be enforced arbitrarily and used to threaten people into compliance. Introduced in this case by ministerial decree, naturally, because 12 months into a pandemic, any changes to the regulations are of such urgency that the proper Parliamentary procedures for prior approval cannot be followed.
So, for the avoidance of doubt, here is the current version of The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (All Tiers) (England) Regulations 2020 (as amended, many times) – https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/1374/2021-03-08
The whole of England is currently in Tier 4 – see schedule 3, Part 4.
Under Schedule 3A (Tier 4 restrictions), paragraph 1 (Restrictions on leaving home): “No person … may leave or be outside of the place where they are living without reasonable excuse.” and “the circumstances in which a person has a reasonable excuse include where one of the exceptions set out in paragraph 2 applies” (note – “include”: other reasonable excuses exist in addition to those listed in paragraph 2: for example, lawful protest).
Under paragraph 2, the exceptions (permitting a person to leave their home) include: “it is reasonably necessary for the person … (a) to buy goods or obtain services … (c) to take exercise outside … (d) to visit a public outdoor place for the purposes of open air recreation … ”
So Richard has at least three reasons why his Sunday activity was on the right side of the law: he may go for a walk to exercise; and he may visit a “bird reserve not far from my home”, and eat a cake and drinking a warm beverage while he was there, for recreation; and thirdly and more generally, the entire episode sounds an eminently reasonable reason to leave home anyway.
Dear lord, there are plenty of bad things going on in the world to worry about, without condemning a man because he chooses to enjoy his birthday on a pleasant Spring day, in a perfectly safe and reasonable manner.
Thank you
And from Monday 29th we will have Steps to replace Tiers. The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (Steps) (England) Regulations 2021 https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2021/364/pdfs/uksi_20210364_en.pdf
A whole new 94 page legal regime, starting with the Rule of Six outdoors over Easter. Thank goodness we have Adam Wagner to tell us what all this means.
Haven’t we been here before? What could possibly go wrong?
“Some of the rules on what you can and cannot do changed on 8 March as part of the ‘COVID-19 Response – Spring 2021’.
Outdoor recreation
You can spend time in outdoor public spaces for recreation on your own, with your household or support bubble, or with one other person. This means you can sit down for a drink or picnic. You must continue to maintain social distance from those outside your household. This is in addition to outdoor exercise, which is already permitted”
Thanks
“Keep firm hold of nurse, for fear of meeting something worse”. The sense of complacency and continued lack of planning is awesome as you quite rightly say. But where is the outrage? We think that Johnson should be dead in the water, but he is not. I am reminded of a passage in 1984 where Winston Smith hears a great commotion and hastens to the scene in the hope that it is the start of an uprising against Big Brother. No, it was a dispute over shoddy kitchenware.
The government face an interesting, no-win dilemma this summer. Relaxing lockdown will result in more cases (and deaths) of Covid, continuing it with a population already fed up and anxious to get away on holiday will lead to more social unrest.
The scenes in Bristol, albeit fueled no doubt by a small mob intent on violence, were but a portent of what is to come when a society used to almost unlimited freedom becomes restricted for so long.
The young now know that they are at relatively little risk from Covid; to them a few (or even a lot more) deaths amongst the elderly is probably preferable to missing another summer on the beach.