Never mind the Government’s ‘four tests’. Here are my four tests for freedom

Those of us who value liberty ought to impose our own ‘four tests’ on our leaders and media elites to ensure that all this bluster about ‘the road to freedom’ actually amounts to a substantial return of our constitutional rights.

Boris Johnson last night said we would ‘reclaim our liberties’ as he set out his lockdown easing strategy, claiming Britain was on a ‘one-way road to freedom’. It is rhetoric that has been sadly lacking from the Prime Minister throughout the pandemic. His words may have been politically expedient but they fell rather flat.

The Government has set out a timeline of expected recovery. Here are the main dates:

Stage 1: Schools reopen March 8; outdoor sport and rule-of-six socialising, March 29; This stage will also include a return of childcare and care home visits of one

Stage 2: Hospitality outdoors, shops and hairdressers will be reopened on April 12

Stage 3: Most social distancing rules relaxed and mixing up to 30 people on May 17

Stage 4: End to all legal restrictions on socialising by June 21

The criteria for moving into each stage will be controlled by whether the country passes four key tests. These include: 1. Whether or not the vaccine roll out is successful. 2. Vaccines are bringing down hospitalisations and deaths. 3. Cases are not reaching emergency levels for the NHS. 4. New variants are not causing unforeseen dangers.

There is a sense of relief that the country finally has a pathway out of a year that has not only brought excess deaths, but economic hardship, isolation, a loss of critical human relationships and cultural instability. Credit must be given where it is due to the Government healthcare workers who have made the vaccine rollout such a success.

However, the foundational worries of lockdown sceptics are unlikely to be put at ease after last night’s announcement. Whether or not the Prime Minister was trying to appease backbench rebels or he was sincere about ‘reclaiming liberties’, the fact remains that a critical part of our constitutional ecosystem has been damaged, perhaps irrevocably.

We live in a society based on precedent and inner commitment to shared freedoms. The presumption of liberty must be an unspoken conviction in each and every citizen for our institutions like the police, the law and the free press to work as they have evolved to work. As Jonathan Sumption noted on February 15 in The Daily Telegraph:

‘What makes us a free society is that, although the state has vast powers, there are conventional limits on what it can do with them. The limits are conventional because they do not depend on our laws but on our attitudes. There are islands of human life which are our own, a personal space into which the state should not intrude without some altogether exceptional justification.’

He went on to say: ‘A society in which oppressive control of every detail of our lives is unthinkable except when it is thought to be a good idea, is not free. It is not free while the controls are in place. And it is not free after they are lifted, because the new attitude will allow the same thing to happen again whenever there is enough public support.’

Peter Hitchens echoed these sentiments this week in his weekly interview with TalkRadio’s Mike Graham.

Mr. Hitchens said:

‘We live in a country where we have sacrificed our freedoms and I think a lot of them are not coming back. Everything which used be something one just did, is going to become something that one has to register and record, and will be the property and at the permission of the state. Instead of assuming we can do what we like, we have now been changed into people who have to ask permission for everything that we do.’

Mr. Hitchens and Lord Sumption, old fashioned, stalwart liberty-defenders that they are, both missed something however. Alongside the presumption of liberty, there is also the question of spontaneity and creative agency that is a requisite for a truly flourishing society. Whatever Britain’s many faults were pre-COVID, no one could deny that it was a society in which a certain amount self-determining inventiveness and uninhibited imagination characterised public life.

This inherent creativity and instinct for spontaneous choice was not merely a decadent feature of a society overrun by consumerism. It was a long-standing tradition, manifested in centuries worth of satirical literature, bawdy folk songs and messy, libertarian disregard for rules and regulations. It is this very shambolic disobedience that has been blunted over the last year and this has been done under the threat of coercive state overreach.

Culture matters. The constitution matters. These are not just a curiosities of heritage or pompous ideas to be deployed demagogically to manufacture consent. They are the very immune system of society.

It won’t be long before we tire of the constant, obsessive press stories about whether or not the country is meeting the ‘four tests’ in order to move to the next phase of lockdown easing. No doubt these reports will be also be couched in school-masterly condescensions about ‘following the rules’ and ‘doing our bit.’

Those of us who value liberty ought to impose our own ‘four tests’ on our leaders and media elites, however, to ensure that all this bluster about ‘the road to freedom’ actually amounts to a substantial return of our constitutional rights.

Here are some recommended test criteria for knowing if freedom has in fact been restored. We will know the government is serious when roll out:

A complete and total rescinding of the Coronavirus Act, as well as an independent review into the Public Health Act 1984 which is dedicated to dismantling all the statutes which have allowed the mass infringement of basic rights over the last 12 months.

Funds matching those spent on government lockdown propaganda in 2020, to be spent on undoing the fear and hysteria that will no doubt keep people cowering way past June 21.

A ‘Festival Of Liberty’, in which Westminster is thrown open to the public at regular intervals to enjoy exhibitions, performances and lectures on the history of British freedom and democracy, starting with Magna Carta and ending with lockdowns.

A ‘V-Day' street party on June 21 in which all British citizens are allowed to take to Piccadilly and Trafalgar Square to dance, mingle and cheer without any harassment by police or security personnel. A speech from the Queen affirming the UK’s commitment to liberty and to avoiding anything like lockdown ever again, would not go amiss either.

We can but dream. However, these four tests of freedom’s return will only seem absurd and overly-demanding to those who harbour contempt for constitutional liberty and who are secretly quite sad that lockdowns might end.