More proportion and balance is needed in the Covid debate

Given his populist agenda to revive the high street and ‘level-up’ deprived areas of Britain, Boris Johnson’s eagerness to apply blunt shutdowns in these regions is nothing less than a betrayal of his voters.

The defiance of the Mayor of Middlesbrough, Andy Preston, against Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s shutdown of the northern city this week marks the first tangible instance of effective opposition to this power-crazed government’s Covid strategy.

Mr Preston said: ‘I have to tell you I think this measure has been introduced based on factual inaccuracies and a monstrous and frightening lack of communication, and ignorance.

‘I do not accept the statement at all. I do not accept these measures.

‘We need to talk to government, they need to understand our local knowledge, expertise and ability to get things done, and preserve jobs and well-being.’

He added: ‘As things stand, we defy the government and we do not accept these measures.

‘We need to get Covid under control and we need to work with people to find a way of preserving jobs and mental health.’

With towns across the north east and west of the country subject to economy-killing curbs on socialising, the already struggling service industry in these areas may now face annihilation. Given his populist agenda to revive the high street and ‘level-up’ deprived areas of Britain, Boris Johnson’s eagerness to apply blunt shutdowns in these regions is nothing less than a betrayal of his voters.

Despite the reassuring rise in dissenting voices in recent weeks, both Hancock and Johnson seem to be gleefully doubling down on their reckless policy, maintaining the now tired rationale that decisions on how to deal with Covid amount to a choice between saving lives or the economy. Anyone who questions the insufferable pieties of the Health Secretary’s moral crusade is accused of being ‘divisive’ or heartlessly wanting to ‘let the virus rip.’

This false antithesis between saving lives and protecting livelihoods and freedoms has been the problem from day one. All nuance and wisdom around how to deal with this nasty virus has been sucked out of the discussion, with those who are sceptical about emergency powers or heavy-handed shutdowns simply dismissed as conspiracy theorists or granny-killers.

Boris Johnson articulated this fatuous reductionism in his last press conference where he insisted that his rash shutdowns were the only way to tackle the rise in Covid infections, as if the last three months of intense public debate among Britain’s leading scientists had never taken place at all.

Johnson said: ‘No matter how impatient we may be, no matter how fed up we may become, there is only one way of doing this. And that’s by showing a collective forbearance, common sense, and willingness to make sacrifices for the safety of others.’

In reality, the sceptic’s position has never been about ignoring the severity of the disease. It has never been about dismissing the awful tragedy of deaths from this disease. Rather, critics of the government’s amassing of power and its trigger-happy shutdowns have based their opinions on a painful awareness that panic and hysteria cannot be the basis of decision-making in a secure and prosperous society.

Just as Covid is a fatal virus in people with pre-existing vulnerabilities, panic too is a deadly pathogen for a free society. Critics of the government like Andy Preston are not callous or ignorant, they are simply calling for proportion and balance.

The fact that the government has failed to change its policy or its reasoning since the first hysterical flight into lockdown, demonstrates that Johnson and Hancock are not basing their actions on the science but on political back-covering. It is impossible not to sympathise with the pressure they must be under, but equally for them to dismiss their critics as inhumane and selfish is to show a frightening lack of statesmanship and critical thinking.