The last week has seen a number of major news stories, from the deaths of refugees, to the sleaze of a government that partied whilst demanding lockdown from everyone else, to the emergence of omicron. All three are of significance.

The reaction to refugees crossing the channel is now symbolic of the divide within our society. The confrontation on Hastings beach between those who wanted to stop that town's lifeboat going to see to save refugees and the crew who were determined to do so is clear evidence of this. We can be empathic, or not. The divide is as blunt as that, because there is quite literally no excuse for us not accepting those who seek genuine refuge in this country.

When it comes to the number 10 Christmas parties the split is just as significant. Those who think themselves to be in the elite that rules us can believe that different rules apply to them from everyone else, or they can be law abiding. Again, the divide is that blunt. There is no reason why these people could not have complied with the rules that were imposed on the country at large.

I happen to think that the majority of people in this country are empathic. I also think that most are law-abiding. For precisely those reasons I think of these two stories will continue to cut through in political terms, and the consequence is already being seen in opinion polls. However, it is the third of these stories that will, eventually, be the most significant.

As Sir Jeremy Farrar has noted this morning in the Observer, the arrival of omicron means that the UK has now lost any advantages it had with regard to coronavirus. If anything, for all practical purposes we are now back where we were in February 2020.

That is because we have a government that is in denial of the facts that we now face Two simultaneous pandemics are now rampant in the UK and yet the government is, as a consequence, taking no real action to curtail either.

Delta, by its self, could have crashed the NHS. After a week, what we know of omicron is that it almost certainly transmits faster than delta, it may well transmit for longer, it might well have a competitive advantage in cell penetration, it is profoundly infectious in young people although that may be the consequence of them having not previously been vaccinated, and although the symptoms may be milder than Delta has so far demonstrated in South Africa that may simply be because the young who are so far being infected do always tend to have milder cases of Covid.

Although nobody can be absolutely sure as yet, it is likely that the UK will suffer a more severe impact from Omicron than South Africa currently has. Firstly, it is winter here. Secondly, that means the transmission will be inside where people are at this time of year in the UK, whereas in South Africa it is summer which means that many people are outside. Thirdly, we have a more elderly population. Fourth, our vaccination rates are not as good as anyone could wish, and the chances that  jabs can be given and be effective before omicron might be the dominant variant inside the UK is low. Fifth, and perhaps most significantly, all the chances that we have had to reduce the spread of coronavirus have been wasted.

What are those chances that we have wasted?

We have not shared vaccines with the world. We cut aid budgets instead.

We have not required that the data on vaccine composition be shared with developing countries so that they might produce their own, patent royalty free, vaccines. Corporate profits have counted for more than safety for the people of the planet.

And, as significantly, we have done nothing to protect the people of this country from the risk that we face.

There was the chance to do this last summer. In the summer lull in cases the opportunity could have been to prepare schools, hospitals and other public places as well as workplaces and public  transport for the inevitability of continuing coronavirus. At its most basic level this would have involved the supply of HEPA ventilators to all classrooms and hospital wards where the impact on case transmission would have been enormous, as a recent study at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge has shown. This opportunity was known to exist, and this action was encouraged by those who knew the risks, but instead the government declared freedom day and sought to wash its hands of the economic consequences of coronavirus. This was an act of gross irresponsibility.

Whatever Boris Johnson might have claimed, he did not deliver freedom from coronavirus last summer. The Delta variant, and now omicron, have now proved that. All he actually did was to deliver a populist trope, the price of which we are only now beginning to count.

What is an unambiguous truth is that the price will increase. Using the same evidence as the UK, the Irish government has already decided to close nightclubs, impose restrictions on hospitality, to require greater social distancing and to prepare the country for another round of furlough. It is already moving to lockdown.

Belgium has shut its schools both to protect children and their teachers, and to prevent the spread of the virus.

Germany Is imposing stronger measures.

All we are doing is to request  that masks be worn in shops and on public transport, but with the clear indication being given that these measures will not be policed.

As a result we can be sure of three things. The first is that omicron will spread faster in the UK than it might in other countries.

The second is that we will create the biggest risk yet to NHS viability, with the chance that the entire health system will collapse.

Third, this will inevitably require strong, reactive, preventive measures in the UK that will, almost inevitably, require new economic lockdowns and disruption to normal patterns of work and social behaviour. With the economy already vulnerable, and not growing as people expected, the likely consequence of that is a return to recession and the need for substantial government intervention in the economy, funded by further rounds of quantitative easing. We might just, of course, be lucky and avoid this, but I very much doubt it. In that case freedom day will seem like very bad joke. I suspect that this will cut through more than the other behaviours that I have noted when it comes to the next election.

In the short term, what is required is very different messaging from the government. Rishi Sunak is still sending out the message that all is well, and there might be tax cuts before the next election. The reality is that what the economy needs is a significant fiscal boost from additional government spending to ensure that even the most basic levels of government service to which people think they are entitled in any developed country can continue to be supplied. Right now in the UK these basic services are at risk, whether it comes to healthcare, social care, education, the judicial and policing systems, local authority services, the environment, oversees aid and almost any other issue that you wish to mention.

Just as this wave of coronavirus could have been prevented by timely action by the government, so could these collapses in public services been prevented by the making of appropriate interventions. Instead, long-term austerity, and the current very apparent desire to return to it, has created the situation where so much of the infrastructure of society on which we all rely is at threat. The perpetuation of well-being that has been a characteristic of the postwar era is prejudiced as a consequence.

What we need now is not just a reaction to the current risk from the government but a total recalibration of its thinking with regard to the role it has to play in society. Without both we face the perpetuation of this risk. If that recalibration takes place we can both tackle coronavirus and its impact and rebuild the well-being of this country. That is the need. The problem is in finding politicians willing to say that.