This is going to be a fantastic Christmas for Britain. Credit: Ben Stansall - WPA Pool/Getty
A prime minister who dreamt of being a new Churchill is having nightmares about Cromwell instead. Indeed, such is the strangeness of pandemic politics that last week, Boris Johnson was practically demanding to be compared to Old Ironsides. “I don’t think there has been anything like it since Cromwell’s time,” Johnson said last Wednesday of the Covid rules he promised faithfully to stand by during the Christmas period.
Perhaps the only person who appeared surprised when Johnson, less than 72 hours later, scrapped those rules was the man himself; the look of bafflement on his face as he announced that he was indeed cancelling Christmas suggests that, like many politicians, he himself may actually believe the words he conjures up every time he finds himself in a tricky corner.
But where does that cancellation leave the PM? Measured in his own terms, he has surely failed: he is now doing something he desperately did not want to do and had promised just days earlier not to do. Hence the barrage of brutal headlines, social media sniping and whispers about his future.
On the face of it, that might all seem justified. A politician who does something that will sadden and inconvenience many people cannot expect a good coverage — especially if that thing also hits the bottom line of many media groups that rely on consumer spending for their revenues. Nor can a leader who repeatedly sends his troops out to defend positions that he quickly abandons count on their loyalty forever.
Neither media nor Conservative parliamentary anger are small things, yet they also count for rather less than the views of the wider public. And my bet is that the public will ultimately forgive Boris Johnson for cancelling Christmas.
The British public are generally less political, more pragmatic and far more subtle than those of us who do and write political things for a living. While the SW1A bubble — Johnson included — may be consumed with binary choices between Cromwellian authoritarianism and Cavalier libertarianism, most voters judge governments by results and circumstances, and politicians by their intentions.
Start with the circumstances. For an awful lot of people, it is clear that the Government is facing extremely difficult problems to which there are no wholly good answers. Poll after poll shows that solid majorities of those surveyed are broadly supportive of restrictive policies that cause economic pain and personal sadness. That’s not because Britain is a nation of authoritarians. It’s because voters think that a pandemic that has killed 60,000 people requires unusual interventions.
Those interventions include changing our Christmas habits. Before that agonising retreat over the festive Covid amnesty, the same polls were consistently showing that a majority of people wanted the rules to be tighter. After the “cancellation”, YouGov found that two-thirds of voters approved of the decision.
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SubscribeOf course voters give Johnson benefit of the doubt.
And that’s because few people think that knee-bender Starmer or the invisible Libdems would do any better.
I’m not clear what Starmer actually wants. You can paint BJ as someone who flip flops, or as someone who is trying to let us be as free as we can until changing data demands that we change course.
Starmer and the media are all united in that they want lockdowns. It has been this way from the start. I’m not sure what they are complaining about now. Starmer wanted an Xmas lockdown https://www.mirror.co.uk/ne…
so it’s not clear what he wants. Does he not want to respond to data as and when it changes to allow people a chance to be free? Who knows. It all just seems a bit “if BJ says x then we say y.”
Although it is Johnson’s fault that he hasn’t laid out why he changes his mind. If he says it’s to ensure people keep their freedom as much as they can, and that these are the conservative ideals that he wants to uphold then he would slay a lot of his criticism immediately.
Exactly, who else is there to turn to? Better the devil you know…reluctant, shambolic, indecisive. But probably not the very worst you could have.
Anyone 4 the return of Dominic Cummings?
The last 40 years have been a political lockout and lockdown, the reason why there is no political competence or dynamics.
My point (above) entirely
With his current majority Johnson has far more to fear from his own ranks of than the opposition who have a four year campaign to fight
There are lots of good candidates for Johnson’s job on the Conservative benches. A great many of them would obviously be better than Johnson.
Well Boris might survive a cancelled Christmas. But thousands of small businesses won’t.
It hasn’t killed ‘60,000’ this is fake news at its most obvious! Note that Flu deaths are down by 93% this year, this tells you that flu deaths are being conflated with covid, many reports of death certs being covid related deaths when the individuals have actually died of something else (which would have killed them anyway). We will probably never know the true figure of pure covid death rates, due to the lies of politicians and hysterical tabloid press exaggerations.
Exactly. One of the first things the government did after the pandemic began to unfold was change the way that deaths are recorded. It especially, and deliberately, conflated people who have died with covid (and who often would have died regardless of covid) with those who truly died of it (and otherwise would not have died). The effect of this has been profound – hence the absurd use of “60,000” which simply isn’t true – unless you accept the new ‘creative’ definition of what constitutes a covid death.
I’m sorry, Svetlana, but this isn’t true. The MDU’s Certifying deaths during COVID-19 outbreak outlines the changes (which are mostly about who can certify a death) and does not say that those who have died “with” are to be conflated with those who died “from”. The death certificate differentiates between underlying and proximate causes, as well as contributary causes, and always has.
On the one hand, we have over 60000 death certificates signed by doctors saying COVID-19 was the underlying cause of death. On the other, we have you,
Vlad“Ian”, suggesting that the doctors can’t tell it from flu. Who should we believe, I wonder?A medical certificate cause of death is only to the attending dr’s best of knowledge and belief , it is not a sworn statement.
The measure that counts is the average deaths number. It is clear that covid has killed far more than 60k. If this theory that it only accelerated the deaths of the ancient and frail is correct then the average death count will be extraordinarily low in winter 2021 & 22.
I betting it will not be 60k people less.
next year those who haven’t had their cancer treatment this year will start dying. your bet is correct but your theory is not
Boris was unfortunate in being PM when Covid struck the world. We were unfortunate in having Boris as PM when Covid struck the UK. He’s a PM for good times. He’s more fun than most occupants of the job but he’s ended up in a role for which he’s entirely unsuited. He’s been panicked into sudden policy changes instead of waiting to see what the consequences of each change has been. If he survives politically it will be because of the dearth of other contenders.
You can’t have a PM who is only there for the good times, anymore than you can have the managing director of a company who is only capable of managing effectively during the good times.
The real test of a good leader is how they cope during the bad times when unpredictable events happen such as Covid.
You obviously believe in the “great man” theory of history. Whereas I believe that occasionally individuals suit the times. A sort of serendipity. The obvious example is Churchill a political failure prior to 1940 and arguably after about 1945 but right just once.
Ooh, yes, what a pity that Corbyn didn’t win the election. What a wheeze that would have been when he put in place his beloved Universal Basic Income and locked everybody up in his own socialist hell.
I never said Corbyn would have done a better job. I never voted for Corbyn anyway. But Corbyn is not PM of this country, Johnson is, and he is an embarrassing miserable failure.
Johnson is in charge. He must be held to account. Who cares what Corbyn would have done, he is old news, thankfully.
Corbyn would undoubtedly have done very poorly had he been PM over the last year. It is idle to speculate whether he would have been worse than Johnson, because the key point is that Johnson has been, and Corbyn would have been, absollutely useless.
In turn, that is because they are typical products of our political culture: innumerate, desperate to please their followers, tribally convinced that the other side are they very devil despite agreeing with them on almost everything, long on verbiage, short on management skills, pretty ignorant about the world and utterly deluded about the importance of the UK in the world.
We desperately need better politicians on both sides of the House.
Jeremy would also have been a disaster for much the same reason. In a crisis you need an natural authoritarian, someone you wouldn’t want in charge of a liberal democracy in normal times. We haven’t got many in Parliament at the moment but Priti Patel would certainly be a contender. Boris has been weak and erratic like a bad King from the Middle Ages constantly listening to advisors and worrying about his image.
Then doubly unfortunate that it coincided with a self-imposed radical rearrangement of relations with the EU, coming to a head at exactly the moment when COVID renewed its threat to the country. The fallout will encourage a search for scapegoats, both by the government, and the population at large. With a safe parliamentary majority the odds are on an internal rearrangement of the government. Given Bojo’s prominence, it is difficult to see ejection of Handcock et al as sufficient. One can only hope.
Or perhaps he just failed to rise to the occasion. His problem is his desperate need to be loved. He has yet to understand Government requires hard choices: sadly he is surrounded by people advising him that doing the popular thing is the way forward. That is what you get when government is run by opinion polls and focus groups and not grown ups.
“the bloke is trying to do his best in bloody difficult circumstances”. Absolutely; and with all and sundry slagging him blind about every move and U turn I’ve yet to read anything anywhere about how any other political party would have handled this any better. “Always make the most out of a good crisis” Labour and specifically Sir Kneel must be laughing down their sleeves all the way to the bank
If they are laughing, they are idiots.
Labour won’t gain any electoral advantage from COVID – if anything – it might be the complete reverse.
The people who thought Labour had nothing to offer at the 2019 election will not have seen anything to change their minds.
I haven’t seen any evidence to suggest that Starmer is laughing down his sleeve or anywhere else for that matter. On the contrary he has been doing his best to get Johnson to take the pandemic more seriously and to take the necessary action to curb the rising infection rates.
It’s true that any leader would have struggled with a crisis of this magnitude – but the big weakness of Johnson is that he doesn’t listen to advice until the situation becomes critical – and never learns from the mistakes he’s made. And that is also typical of that ship of fools that is pleased to call itself the Cabinet.
In the history books you will find a government that was known as the ‘ministry of all the talents’. Unfortunately Boris pushed the limited amount of talent at his disposal on to the back benches so he has a ministry of little talent. I suspect Mr Cummings was smarter than anyone in his team but unfortunately not driven by any higher moral purpose than wielding and keeping power. In the face of an ongoing war situation surely it’s time for a temporary government of national unity bringing together those who have competence and the willingness to tell the truth and make timely and well informed decisions!
A government of national unity or any other power grab would probably be opinioned by the brutal serfs as the political elite seizing the opportunity to take back control of the sovereignty they prostituted during the Brexit campaign.
I would certainly agree that a temporary government of national unity is what is needed. Then sack Johnson, and put a more able Tory in as PM.
Voters probably give the government the benefit of the doubt because this is an entirely new situation and everyone, everywhere is having to deal with it as best we know how in the absence of complete information and experience. That means trial and error. Talk of “yet another u-turn” is just another instance of an intellectually bankrupt media class trying to keep their chosen narrative on the boil. If the government is still rubbish and can’t perform after this is over (which seems like a fairly accurate prediction), get rid. Then Johnson can at least have been like Churchill in one respect: he was there for the worst of times, then got booted out when it was over.
At least Churchill stepped up to the plate, acted like a grown-up and led everyone through the worst times – which is more than you can say about Johnson.
Churchill had much more experience of wars and political shenanigans than Boris Johnson, you know! If you read some history you will see that Churchill also had torrid times in Parliament during the war.
Johnson has been cosseted and cushioned all this life – and been excused from accepting responsibility for his actions. He’s never had a proper job – and whose fault is that? He’s a lazy idle git who wants everyone else to do the hard yards whilst he walks off with all the kudos.
And having limited political experience is no excuse for not being able to do the job. He wanted it, nobody forced him into it. And he was in charge of the Foreign Office at one time and made a complete balls-up there.
He is an arrogant t****r – and I hope some day he receives the comeuppance he so richly deserves.
I wasn’t comparing their skills as leaders…I was just saying they were both PM during hard times. That much is true. Churchill was a statesman. Boris Johnson hasn’t shown any sign of being a statesman as yet and I doubt he will.
Yes and WSC had a heart attack in late 1940, which would have killed a weaker specimen. But give BJ a chance it’s still early days!
How ironic that this most Cavalier of PMs should in the end be compared to Cromwell rather than Charles II.
The story would not have been materially different if anyone else had been running the country. Starmer might have locked down sooner but so what? Being PM at this time is like applying for Mayor of Hiroshima in 1945.
Ummmm. Johnson is a journalist by profession – good at striking a pose but not interested in data, detail and hard decisions. Starmer might well have been no better, but Johnson has set a very low standard and other industrial nations have dealt with this a lot better – notably Japan, South Korea and Germany.
Including Germany in that list might have made sense a couple of months ago. Have you seen how Corona is spiking there now?
Early Nov: 10,000 deaths
Now: 25,000 dead
So was WSC.
Brexit was the outcome of decades of infighting within the Conservative party, the present machinations are the opening shots of the infighting between the one nation conservatives and the laissez faire right. Indeed some of those laissez faire madmen even marked MrsT as a socialist.
All the evidence so far is that this govt will be more socialist than Blair’s!
I wish commentators would stop quoting YouGov polls as evidence of public opinion. The membership is heavily skewed towards older retired people. It’s convenient if you want to find some conservative views (small c) but probe deeper for balance.
I think much of the electorate will be of the view that, in the circumstances, they would, like Boris, choose the more optimistic course even if that means having to back down in the face of new information, as opposed to the lockdown-hard-now-forever approach advocated by some. I suspect Starmer knows this, and recognises that his polling would suffer if he becomes seen by all as an unequivocal lockdown fanatic and humourless Puritan.
Well I’ll not vote for Boris or his team of inadequates. Instead of terrifying us why do they not make it clear we are not immortal and they are not god’s? That would be honest.
The government does not seem to appreciate that the many of the ever-growing band of arithmeticians, political scientists and psychologists in or linked to Sage, demonstrably have very limited experience of the world and life outside their cloisters. Neil Ferguson has his fixation on geometric growth. Then there is a professor from St Andrews who tells us that Christmas dinner ‘creates perfect conditions for coronavirus’ ““ it takes a giant mind to work that out.
Few of the “sage” folk can suggest any other plan than lock-down. Of course Boris
and most of his team are in their thrall as they evidently lack real scientific
knowledge and have limited experience of the world and life outside of their “bubble”.
Are there plans B ? C or D? The government has had 10 months to come up with them. Vaccination is now the promised solution. What happens if vaccination is not as successful as forecast ““ what then? There will be more early deaths ““ we are all going to die one day ““ how could this be sensitivity dealt with?
We need knowledgeable leaders.
After nearly fifty years of Comprehensively (dreadful) Education, which accounts for about 90% of our children, we just don’t have any “knowledgeable leaders” anymore.
Judging by the fiasco just executed at Eton, we shouldn’t expect anything from the Private Sector either.
Consummatum est!
The history of British education over the last fifty years is indeed a sad story. But those same comprehensives have done what they were intended to do – they have raised the standard of education of the bottom half and especially the bottom quartile.
The choice of this dismal goal is the problem, not the comprehensive system.
Thank you Anthony Crosland Esq.
I was one of the first to experience the Comprehensive system having missed the Grammer system by two years. I can attest that it did not in any way improve the standard for those who experienced it. Perhaps you could provide evidence for your opinion?
While I don’t believe the polls, there’s no indication that Labour would have done any better. There’s no sign of any adults in the room – no grown-up alternative government in waiting.
I have found Johnson’s tone to be extremely jarring. The way he scoffed at Starmer for wanting to cancel Christmas last Wednesday during PMQ’s was typical of his lack of seriousness. He is not a person that inspires and unifies during a national crisis. He feels inadequate and not up to the task. Even if a different PM had not made any materially different decisions at least they might have struck a better tone with the public. Although, I believe a more decisive leader would have made better decisions when it counted and not always waited till the last minute.
It may be that Sage’s over-reliance on flawed PCR testing and perverse computer modelling will be what finally undermines public confidence the government.
The distinguished lawyer Rainer Fuellmich has recently sent a Cease and Desist letter to Christian Drosten, co-author of the SARS-CoV-2 PCR test accusing him of providing misleading information about the ability of the test to identify infection. Further, a group of 22 scientists has written to Eurosurveillance alleging 10 fatal flaws in the original SARS PCR paper that Drosten co-authored back in January and asking that it should be withdrawn.
The government’s response has been largely based on fluctuations in numbers of PCR ‘cases’. If the test is finally proven to be flawed, then their strategy collapses.
The Johnson government has revealed it has, and perhaps has all along only ever had, a one-tracked mindset about this – an all-out effort to eliminate Covid irrespective of the cost is the only policy they’ll consider. I can’t see this goal being achieved in objective reality, so their only possible strategy is that a combination of the objective benefits that the vaccine can deliver towards this goal, plus a massive propaganda campaign to convince us that they’ve successfully dealt with the problem by their own terms, will satisfy enough of the public that they’re done an acceptable job.
In fairness, their first propaganda campaign did work – it’s convinced many people that this virus is far worse than it is. So maybe the government can pull another con job off again.
But imo this has spun completely out of control since the initial 3 week lockdown, and the current leadership is not going to be able to get things back under control now. Nothing they’ve done has worked so far (if by “worked”, we mean stopping Covid in its tracks, which as mentioned above appears to be the government’s sworn mission now). And I don’t have the confidence others have that the vaccine will be the silver bullet.
Therefore it seems to me that a change at the top is the only way out of this. Much the same with the Brexit paralysis; it was never going to move forward with May in charge, and similarly with Covid, while Boris (and Hancock etc) are in the top seats, we’re never going to get out of this. A pasting in the local elections, just as the Tories suffered over Brexit in 2018, which forces MPs and the wider party into finally getting off their arses and pressurising the government (and leads to a no confidence vote and Boris being replaced with some fresh thinking on the issue) is to my mind a more realistic scenario than thinking Boris is going to come out of this looking like a hero.
You aren’t taking the Covid seriously enough. So far it has killed about one Brit in a thousand in about 9 months. That’s serious.
I agree. The government here plus pretty much everywhere else is in so deep on this that the vaccine is the only way out.
It’s the only approach that justifies the measures that have already been taken. Any other way out, such as seeing the level of deaths tail off naturally (as seems to happen with viruses, or else our species would be extinct) would concede that the measures had little or no benefit.
They need the vaccine. Which also makes me wonder if that is truly safe too.
Polls eh, nuff said
Boris is a bumbling buffoon. It is not an act, is a fact!
Looking at your photo I think it’s you that’s the bumbling buffoon!
Interesting to note that Sturgeon , who hasn’t really done any better in fighting Covid, is miles ahead in the Scottish polls.
When Kier Starmer is describing the Governments previous plans for Christmas by allowing families to enjoy meeting up for 5 days at Christmas as “a free for all” I can imagine how authoritarian his approach would have been had he been PM, there are many people who describe the current measures as too restrictive but Keir Starmer reminds us it could be much worse had he been in charge.
Do you think imposing public health measures during a pandemic disease is authoritarian ? Maybe it’s just an annoying but essential step that nobody wants but needs to be done.
Well if we are calling them simply public health measures we might as well go all out and do a full Wuhan, or maybe quarantine people in tower blocks with armed guards as happened in Australia recently, even here those people who are unwilling to follow the current rules risk fines which could impact the rest of their lives, but as long as it’s for the good of public health I suppose anything is justified.
The question to address is whether the measures are even helping to stop the virus. The evidence for that, as opposed to theoretical modelling, is very weak. They are not “essential” if their impact is low. We also know that the lock downs impose an adverse impact on human life too.
It’s not cancelling Christmas that will stick to Boris, it’s being poor at everything else
Will probably betray us on brexit.
Can lock down the country but can’t send back foreign pedophiles, rapist,
murders etc
Business destroyed
Lives ruined due to NHS not dealing with cancers etc.
The only plus he has is all the other parties are an absolute shower
“It’s because voters think that a pandemic that has killed 60,000 people requires unusual interventions.”
And Britain has had a year of unusual interventions. 60,000 people still died. And millions more had their lives irretrievably damaged. If lockdowns worked there wouldn’t be 60,000 dead people. As for Christmas, some people will cancel it and others won’t, regardless of what Boris Johnson says.
If those 60,000 cases were examined closely, one by one, it would probably be found that most of them were people in very frail health who were going to die of the very next thing to come along that gave their bodily systems the smallest slightest push; e.g. a bad cold.
So the economy and civil liberties have been destroyed owing to an illness which, SO FAR, has been fatal to the tolerably healthy in a vanishingly small percentage of the population.
How does this make sense?
It doesn’t make sense. I agree that it’s been mostly frail, elderly and those with underlying conditions that died, same as here in the US. On top of that, since US hospitals got money related to covid cases, some people who died with covid were counted as dying of covid. We likely won’t ever know the actual death count.
People will give Johnson the benefit of the doubt as along as they accept the ‘scientific’ premises of his strategy for dealing with the pandemic.
But as the economic catastrophe caused by this strategy unfolds, they will question whether the ‘science’ was all it was cracked up to be; and discover that (a) there were a lot of different opinions from different, equally qualified, biologists and epidemiologists; most of whom had a much better track record of prediction than the lamentable tiny crew who have been advising this PM; (b) that the threat from the Chinese WuFlu has been (hitherto) greatly exaggerated, and (c) that, just as a certain kind of military general is always looking for a war for his country to fight [it gives him the chance of swaggering around, being important, lecturing the public, winning gongs], so a certain kind of epidemiologist will massively exaggerate threats from viruses because that makes THEM super-significant in the national eye. Neil Ferguson got the Foot and Mouth outbreak completely wrong at a terrible cost of animal life.
The public will then conclude that this PM, and his woefully inadequate team, from motives of cowardice let themselves be the prisoners of a small coterie of alarmists, who got to be more important and self-important the more they banged the Terror Drum.
When giant multitudes have lost their jobs and futures, this error will not be treated as a slight mistake.
I agree. I just think that the realisation may take time. My own MP is a Minister. I have emailed him to remind him that WW1 Generals were popular during that war. But they are not now. I believe the analogy is very relevant.
Still can’t fathom why people are so worked up about cases. Excess mortality is the only metric that’s relevant.
What can we do if we do not give him and the rest of his useless cabinet the benefit of the doubt? The next election is years away.
The Supreme Court refused to hear the recent legal challenge against lockdown which Simon Dolan organised and to which I contributed. So legally we are at the end of the road, unless Boris’ blundering opens up another legal pathway.
https://www.crowdjustice.co…
He has to believe what he says; he lies too often to live with himself if he owned it!
Imagine thinking beinf compared to Cromwell is a good thing
Actually, I suggest that his recent decision to put London in tier 4 shows him as rather more courageous that he is given credit for.
There are bound to have been poor decisions in the confusion caused by the virus but Johnson has shown the willingness to take very unpopular decisions and reverse his own plans and open himself to criticism.
I hate the lockdowns, there’s a good chance that they achieve little at great cost but my confidence in the government has increased this week.
From the article: “There are already angry calls for his resignation and a government of national unity.”
Just let things sink in a bit. This is a Conservative government which won an 80-seat majority scarcely a year ago. Johnson may survive on the basis set out in the article, that the public don’t blame him for the Covid. But equally, he may not. The evidence to date is that he and his government have fallen very far and very fast in popularity. Every good conservative ought to be asking why, and asking what should we do next.
In the last week or so Boris has quietly cancelled criminalising the BBC licence fee and has let the home office civil servants get away with total lies in the grooming gangs report. Who exactly do you think is going to vote for Boris and why?
Why does Unherd give copy space to this bubble dwelling remainer? Anyone who believes there is such a thing as a”sophisticated twitter user” needs some kind of intervention.
Boris’s ambitions should now be restricted to avoiding the fate of his hero Mussolini.
Interesting analogy however, Boris is totally unlike Cromwell, he did not fight and win a Civil War, close down Parliament: no he is much more like “Tumbledown d**k” as Cromwell’s son was known. So it will not be long before he gives up. Just as long as we don’t end up with a restored Stuart Style Monarchy with Prince Charles in charge.
Let’s not forge that the alternative was Corbyn, not some imaginary person who would have known exactly what to do and not to do, every step of the way!
Boris is doing ok in the circumstances. Corbyn would have had everybody on Universal Basic Income and the country changed into his idea of a socialist paradise.
Unfortunately this particular scapegoat is not longer available for denunciation, though in certain quarters the ritual will no doubt be perpetuated ad nauseam, having had no influence on the course of events since before COVID arrived. That albatross, along with another, is firmly tied around the neck of Her Majesty’s Prime Minister. He doesn’t seem to be enjoying the experience.
Slightly before the choice narrowed to Johnson v. Corbyn we had other options including Jeremy Hunt and Rory Stuart. Neither of them was perfect, but either of them would have been preferable to both Johnson and Corbyn.
Not a word about Brexit! This is where Boris stands to win a great name for himself and his government, if he frees us from the coils of the unelected Brussels bureaucrats. Covid seems to have been a diversion run by China. I would like to see China boycotted by the rest of the world.
I’ve always been suspicious of those who call him an idiot – maybe what they’d like to believe – but I think his strength lies in the advisors around him. Since DC departure, that quality has improved and I expect the quality of decision making to improve. Communication needs to be better, but for those who want it to all change, be careful of what you wish for – I don’t see any alternative government in waiting
He may well survive. Inertia is a poweful force. But with a british sense of humour Boris is a sausage roll (or similar) will be a christmas #1.
I just feel that we should have a more balanced view between the damage to the economy and covid. Lockdowns don’t work – if they did we would not be in the situation of repeating them. In the immediate future I think Boris will remain or fall on the outcome of Brexit. If he leaves us under the remit of the EU I think he is finished. Re covid, I don’t trust the figures I think the tests are unreliable and I think there is a lot of preparing asbestos pants for any subsequent enquiry. Ferguson has a dreadful track record of prediction and yet Boris and his cabinet are preferring the opinion of modellers over that of other experts. Garbage in, garbage out. They have not, as yet, provided any meaningful cost/benefit analysis. The corvid rules are illogical. I am amazed at how easy it was to deprive us of liberty in this ‘pandemic’.