Trust, not tiers, can beat this nightmare

tODaY, the country finds itself in the bleakest of midwinters.

some 38 million citizens – two-thirds of England – now find themselves in the misery of the toughest coronavirus restrictions.

to add to the agony, Downing street is refusing to snuff out grim speculation that, if infections keep surging, Lockdown 3.0 lurks in the New Year. to most, that would be cast-iron proof that clampdowns don’t work. However hard the virus is squeezed, it – inevitably – returns.

But the Government is too inflexible to concede that it might have been wrong all along. that the pain, cost and sacrifice so far endured could have been for nothing.

true, the vaccines are promising. But if, all too foreseeably, ministers bodge the rollout, what then? Will we bunny-hop endlessly between curbs of varying severity?

Perhaps. Yesterday, after bemoaning the turpitude of unsustainable borrowing, Rishi sunak splurged billions more on Covid bailouts lasting until at least May.

so far, 65,000 have died with the disease. to their loved ones, each is a tragedy. But what of the terrible toll of lockdown itself? the businesses ruined. the pandemic of poverty from lost jobs. the shortened lives from mental illness and blighted education.

and the hordes consigned to early graves due to the NHs’s obsession with Covid, dwarfing deaths from the virus. Just read La’troya Hall’s harrowing story on Pages 10 and 11. Her young husband died from cancer after doctors turned him away from hospital 13 times.

the Mail appreciates tackling Covid is fiendishly difficult. But Britain cannot stay trapped forever in this nightmare.

surely it’s the Prime Minister’s duty to draw up a feasible exit strategy?

In his approach to Christmas, he may have stumbled upon one.

Wouldn’t it be better to shield the vulnerable and hand the rest of Britain their lives back? Instead of being hit with heavy-handed rules and regulations, the public should be trusted to exercise personal responsibility.