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meIt is hope that catches you in the end. If in early December the nation had been told that Christmas wasn’t going to be this year, then obviously it would have been a hit, but we would have. Many families had already made the mental leap to stay home, judging by the uneasy reaction to Boris Johnson’s initial promise of a five-day cohabitation super-spreader, and surely more could have been persuaded.
But no. Our leader’s Christmas gift to a nation already on the edge of its ties was instead to get everyone excited and then trample them at the last minute, when families had spent money some couldn’t afford on food. that now will not be eaten. and tickets that cannot be used. Unpack your bags, Professor Chris Whitty said, if you planned to escape. Unravel your plans, stop inviting people you’ve allowed yourself to look forward to looking forward to, undo the dots that kept some people from falling apart. But as miserable as all this is, recent events have blown a hole in more than one nation’s plans. This crisis is not just for Christmas, but for the next few months.
Cynics may view the news of a new, more contagious virus mutation as little more than political cover for another embarrassing but inevitable U-turn. It is true that opposing, or even scientifically advising, this government must have the urge to scream in an infinitely deep cave; you know you will eventually have to echo his words, but usually a week late. (Did Johnson really have no idea this was coming on Wednesday, when he ridiculed Keir Starmer for suggesting that Christmas plans be canceled?) But it is unfair to dismiss pioneering scientific work so lightly. Scientists at the newly established Covid-19 Genomics UK consortium have worked fast and furiously to identify an important part of the explanation for why a lockdown, supposedly the only thing we know that works, didn’t work as well in November, not buying as well. as long as expected.
If this strain of the virus is 70% more contagious and growing rapidly as a percentage of all cases, then we will have to work much harder to contain it. That raises the possibility that tactics that used to work are now losing their effectiveness. Just as doctors have to increase the morphine dose as the patient gets used to it, the restrictions may need to be deeper or longer to have the same effect. If so, we are likely under pressure for the rest of the winter, spring, or as long as it takes for vaccines to provide relief.
The infatuation at London train stations the night the news of the closure broke suggests that some have no intention of being trapped again. There is already speculation that second home owners will get it out of town for the Cotswolds, or Cornwall, or anywhere else where the new strain is not common (but at this rate it soon will be), half-thinking where They want to shelter long term. This year has taught us that what other countries do is a more reliable guide to the future than what our own Prime Minister says, and one by one, other European countries, not to mention Wales and Scotland, are heading towards a total national lockdown. .
It is quite easy to outline what should happen now. First, Downing Street should stop pretending Britain could deal with a no-deal Brexit on top of all this. Do you handle a virus with all the skill of a man panting behind a bus that he will never take and hope the world will believe you have hidden gifts for crisis management that you have mysteriously chosen not to use before? Oh please. Just do the damn deal; Take a worry off the nation’s shoulders and free your cabinet to focus on the questions that arise in a potentially very rapid stage of the pandemic.
Can schools realistically stay open during January in the worst affected regions? If not, can the exams be taken this summer? To put it politely, it seems unlikely that the massive testing system that teachers have just been told to spend their Christmas break conjuring from scratch, using personnel that seem to exist largely in Gavin Williamson’s head, is up and running in time to take the pressure. Should students who have gone home for Christmas to places where the new mutation is widespread really return this January to colleges where it is not? Can the vaccine be implemented faster or further? Economic forecasts will need to be revised, and retail and hospitality will potentially need further bailouts. And it would be insane now, given the likely consequences for jobs, to withdraw pandemic benefit supplements in April.
Yet all of this requires a government capable of leading its rebellious partisans first, and an exhausted country second, with it down a long and hard road. It has become a cliche to blame Johnson’s personal need to be loved for his inability to articulate unwanted truths or make painful decisions. But this little prime minister rests on the shoulders of smaller men, on whom he depends for a more fragile parliamentary majority than the figures suggest, and they too deserve some of the blame. The fact that Brexit supporters are so often skeptical of Covid is no coincidence; The same reluctance to face reality, and the same stubborn conviction that if they shout loud enough, they will somehow prevail, underpins both ideologies. These are the people who put Johnson where he is now and who could bring him down tomorrow. The fate of the country now depends on its ability to change or its ability to turn against them.
