‘Do as we say, not as we do’ leaders lost trust of the people

ANOTHER week, another new set of lockdown rules on the way. Only the media keeps being told to stop calling them lockdown anything, they are merely restrictions.

People can no longer meet in groups of more than six from Monday, and that will be enshrined in law.

The cynic in this columnist notes the timing of the announcement was just several hours after the Government admitted it planned to break international law by changing the terms of our Brexit deal in relation to Northern Ireland.

Just coincidence, surely. But there is a link between the two points.

If it’s OK for the Government to break international law - ‘even if in a specific and limited way’ which is the Government’s defence - then why should people obey any law?

Is meeting up in a group of seven, from Monday, not just breaking the law ‘in a specific and limited way?’

Of course, the obvious answer is that the new social distancing rules - laws - are designed to save lives and that’s all it should take for them to be adhered to.

But I can’t help but wonder when I see people not sticking to the rules in shops, or in parks, or wherever around here, whether part of the problem is that the Government time and again is proving to be a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ government.

Shopkeepers around here told me that when the Dominic Cummings story happened - when it was apparently fine for him to drive all the way from London to Durham with Covid symptoms in his family, and then to start driving around County Durham to check his eyesight was OK at a time when we were all banned from all but essential journeys - people quoted it to them regularly as a reason for interpreting the rules their own way too.

Police officers have reported the same.

We all need to pull together - but we need leadership we can trust and have faith in.

Otherwise, it won’t work.