The legitimacy of lockdown is beginning to fray
Tightening this therapeutic authoritarianism too much will destroy the consensus it needs in order to work
Ithink a rational response to the lockdown is “I hate it, but I’ll do my best to follow the rules because I don’t want to do any harm”. An irrational response is to want to brick everyone up in their homes and shoot sunbathers on sight. The Health Secretary hasn’t quite gone that far, but when he threatened to ban outdoor exercise if more of us don’t stay at home, he came dangerously close to breaking the very social consensus that he’s trying to build.
Matt Hancock is obsessed with the front line. Quite right, too. The Government is desperate to ensure that the health system isn’t overwhelmed as it was in Italy (with appalling human consequences), so it has focused on increasing NHS capacity, by laying on beds and equipment, and flattening the rate of infection, by shutting down the country. The toll on the Health Secretary is physically palpable – the poor man looks like he probably wakes up screaming “Stay indoors! Stay indoors!” – and I for one would offer to buy him a drink when this is all over.
But if this really is the moral equivalent of war then history teaches us that wars can be won on the battlefield but lost on the home front, and just as nations have been defeated because they ran out of food or a revolution broke out, so the Government’s strategy could collapse because the millions of civilians stuck indoors lose patience.
The Government seems to have no sensitivity for this. In one press conference after another, the need to stay home is impressed upon us as though we were recalcitrant simpletons, but there’s barely any recognition of the cost in jobs, income, crime or sanity. To repeat, most of us accept the lockdown because we want to help save lives, but the legitimacy of this incredible experiment in self‑restraint is undermined not only by those who flout the rules but also by those who enforce them.
Obviously the chief medical officer of Scotland is a colossal hypocrite: after telling Scots to batten down the hatches, it was discovered that she had been visiting her second home in Fife to go on a nice walk with the family. This is probably the great divide of the pandemic, namely middle‑class people with multiple homes or big gardens telling people in tiny flats to “STAY INDOORS”.
The disgraced official deserves her five minutes of shame – but did it really necessitate a formal warning by the police? Is it really necessary to move on old ladies who sit down for a breather on a bench, or to threaten to arrest drivers, or to dye a blue lagoon black to stop people from taking photos of it? Where did all these coppers even come from? I’ve never seen so many in my life. I suppose that with the public now locked indoors, the police finally feel safe enough to walk the streets.
What we’re living under right now is therapeutic authoritarianism, in which any amount of state intervention is justified because it’s all for our own good. But if it tightens controls too much, the Government could trigger civil disobedience, which would signal the death of a consensus and, in effect, a way of life.
The Queen expressed the traditional British attitude perfectly when she referred in her broadcast to our “self‑discipline” and “good‑ humoured resolve”. These are the ingredients of common sense, a constitution unlike any other because it isn’t invented or even written, but evolves down the centuries, shaped by experience and informed by national character. In this country, we govern by consent.
I hope we don’t forget that. I hope we don’t become a nasty little island where neighbours snoop on each other and compete to be holier than thou, where the authorities are feared and dissent leads to social ostracism – and a surreptitious walk to the post box becomes a police matter.
God is mocking us by sending such nice weather during a lockdown: or is the weather nice because we’re stuck indoors? Birdsong has replaced car noise; the air seems fresher; the water in the pond is crystal clear. Does everything have to go back to normal when the war is over?
Warmer weather, however, is a pain in the neck for anyone with big hair; quite literally. It sweats at night and itches in bed. I know this is a first world problem, but I can’t get a haircut because the barbers are shut and my barnet grows like billy‑o: not down, but up, so that after six weeks it looks like a Russian hat. I said to a vicar: “By the end of this crisis, I’m going to be incredibly thin with massive hair.” He replied: “My dear, that’s every 40‑year‑ old man’s dream come true!”
How is this playing out across the country? Will husbands trust their wives to cut their hair? I’m sure no wife would do the opposite. A friend in France has self‑sheared with a pair of clippers and now looks like a lunatic. I would do the same but one of the downsides of having a mop that everyone comments on (make‑up girls find me fascinating) is that I’m terrified of losing it because, without it, I’m half the man I was.
If I shave my hair, will it grow back? I can’t take that risk. My only hope is to lobby the Government to have Toni and Guy’s classed as an essential service.