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Boris Johnson made an extraordinary U-turn Saturday when he unveiled new month-long nationwide lockdown measures in England amid allegations that government indecision and delay will cost lives and livelihoods across the country.
With immediate warnings of dire economic consequences and a growing backlash among Conservative MPs, the prime minister announced that a series of measures to combat growing Covid infections would take effect on Thursday. They will remain in place until December 2.
Under the new measures, non-essential shops and venues, as well as pubs and restaurants, will be closed. Schools, colleges and universities will remain open. The public will only be told to leave home for specific reasons, such as work if you cannot work from home, to buy food and essentials, exercise, medical appointments, or care for the vulnerable.
The vulnerable and those over 60 are advised to be especially careful and minimize their social contacts, but a formal request to protect themselves will not be returned. Government experts said the “time-limited” measures would see a return to a regionalized approach.
In another important change, the original leave scheme under which the state paid 80% of workers’ wages will be extended for the duration of the new lockdown. The ministers had resisted an extension of the plan. The move angered regional leaders who had been calling for additional support for weeks. Mark Drakeford, the Prime Minister of Wales, said the Treasury had refused to extend the license when the blockade of Wales “firewall” began.
At a press conference, the prime minister said that he had decided to re-impose a national blockade because “we could see deaths of several thousand a day.” The virus, he said, “is spreading even faster than the worst case reasonable from our scientific advisers.” He added: “The risk is that, for the first time in our lives, the NHS will not be there for us and for our families.”
Its top science advisor, Patrick Vallance, said the data painted “a very bleak picture.” Deaths during the winter, he warned, could be “twice as severe or more severe than the first wave.”
The government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) had called for a “short lockdown period” five and a half weeks ago, but was rejected. At that stage, the UK had an average of 4,964 new cases per day, with 1,502 Covid patients in hospital and 28 deaths. Yesterday, there were 21,915 more cases in the UK, more than 10,000 Covid patients in the hospital and 326 deaths.
Johnson said he still believed a regional approach had been “the right thing to do.” However, he said that the government had to be “humble before nature.” He said taking no further action would lead to the NHS being overwhelmed, with doctors and nurses forced to choose “who would live and who would die.”
“Christmas is going to be different this year, maybe very different,” he said. “But it is my sincere hope that, by cracking down now, we can allow families across the country to be together.” He said that while the closure was not as strict as in the spring, the “basic message is the same: stay home, protect the NHS and save lives.”
The move comes less than two weeks after Johnson accused Labor of trying to “turn off the lights” following Keir Starmer’s approval of a circuit breaker lockout scheduled to overlap with midterm. It is also an admission that the three-tier system in England, designed to contain local outbreaks, has failed.
Starmer said the government’s delay in imposing a blockade will come “at economic and human cost” and that the government had resisted scientific calls since September. He said it was unfair to pretend to the public that Christmas “will be normal.”
“I don’t think Christmas is normal and I think we have to level with the public on that,” he said.
Johnson revealed the measures after presenting his Cabinet with gruesome data warning that the NHS could exceed its fixed and emergency capacity by the first week of December, even after elective procedures are canceled. The ministers were told that the growth of this virus is national and faster in areas with lower rates. A Commons vote on the measures will take place on Wednesday. Conservative MPs are demanding an urgent upgrade of the test and trace system to ensure that the “nightmare” of new measures is not needed again.
There is also private anger among the government’s scientific advisers, who say concerns about exceeding reasonable worst-case scenarios have been around for weeks. Insiders raised concerns about the government’s unwillingness to do something deemed unpopular, adding that restrictions now had to be more severe and longer than would have been the case with a previous action.
Ministers are already being warned that a second national lockdown would hit the economy with the same force as the recession that followed the 2008 financial crisis. Industry experts said retailers and hospitality companies, many of which already on the edge of the abyss, they would join a growing line of companies filing for bankruptcy without further government support. TUC Secretary General Frances O’Grady said: “The extension of the licensing plan is overdue and necessary, but ministers must do more to protect jobs and prevent poverty.” According to the Association of Independent and Self-Employed Professionals, thousands of the self-employed were said to face a “financial calamity” without further support.
Chris Hopson, executive director of NHS Providers, said the health service figures were dismayed by the handling of the new closure plans. He said trusted NHS leaders who learned of the closure plans through media reports had concluded that the government’s actions “were not swift, decisive or clear enough.”
Neil Ferguson, the Imperial College London professor whose model is still reporting to the government, said urgent research was underway on whether schools and universities could continue to function as they do today, given the role adolescents could play in transmission of the virus.
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said retailers were now facing a “nightmare before Christmas,” adding that “there were no circumstances” in which any retail outlet would have to close in a second national closure. “It will cause untold damage to Main Street in the run-up to Christmas, cost countless jobs, and permanently delay the recovery of the overall economy, with minimal effect on the transmission of the virus,” he said.
Sir Jeremy Farrar, a director at the Wellcome Trust and a senior Sage figure who had lobbied for further action, said the lockdown was correct and cautioned that the lockdown should likely be imposed for the next two months. “If we can prepare now for a few weeks of tighter restrictions, there is a possibility that we can relax a bit between Christmas and New Years without the virus getting out of control,” he said yesterday.
Many scientists were still angry that the government had taken so long to heed their advice. “Once again the UK has been slow and delayed decisive action until the last moment,” said Stephen Griffin, associate professor at the University of Leeds School of Medicine.
