There will be no Boris reset until he breaks the endless lockdown cycle

In Downing Street, the true lessons from Sweden’s Covid-19 strategy are becoming more influential

Having almost died from Covid-19 – and testing negative again a few days ago – Boris Johnson can be pretty sure of being virus-free. But he was “pinged” by the NHS Covid-19 app, so is dutifully selfisolating for a fortnight. Confined to Downing Street, he has to work out how to save Christmas. His scientific advisers warn him that if the country is “released” (their word) for five days – as he proposes – he’d need to pay for it by locking down for a further 25 days. So he has ended up spending this week as a prisoner of his own policies, both physically and politically.

He’s in good company: some 30,000 NHS staff are currently absent due to Covid self-isolation (or sickness), quite a dent in the workforce. Isolation will give the Prime Minister plenty of time to consider whether his quarantine policies might be improved, perhaps releasing nurses who test negative. A decision on renewing (or renaming) lockdown is due next week, and there’s plenty of room for improvement in how those decisions are made.

Last time, he was bounced into lockdown by officials who leaked classified (and, as it turned out, dodgy) data. This time, it can be different.

The euphoria over the recent vaccine success – Oxford is the latest with good news – has diverted attention from the bad news from Liverpool, where his mass testing pilot is not going brilliantly. The Prime Minister had seen this “moonshot” as a route out of lockdown: if near-instant tests can be rolled out on a national scale, with 10 million sent out each day, normal life could resume. No more needless self-isolation, no more walking around without knowing whether they are infected.

But moonshot would need almost everyone to take the tests – and for the kit to be reliable. A brutal assessment from the British Medical Journal says the rapid tests being used in Liverpool miss too many Covid cases to make it fit for a £100 billion national roll-out. Ministers say that far fewer people are coming forward than they hoped. It’s not unsalvageable, but Dominic Cummings, the great champion of the scheme, has now gone. So Operation Moonshot looks set to join Test and Trace in the graveyard of hideously expensive Covid failures.

So what does this leave? For months, lockdown-sceptic MPS have pointed to Sweden as the last outpost of liberty. But in recent weeks, the word has gone out: Sweden has fallen. Its second wave has arrived and its bars are closing. Hope of vaccines arriving by Easter has, meanwhile, strengthened the case for lockdown: just a few months longer, it’s argued. No need to take a gamble by unlocking, if the medical cavalry is so close. But the roll-out of these vaccines will take time and prove a significant logistical challenge.

It’s worth looking a bit more closely at Sweden. What its critics invariably get wrong is the idea that it was pursuing a “herd immunity” strategy – letting the virus rip, and somehow hoping it won’t come back. Anders Tegnell, its public health chief, has repeatedly explained that this is a myth: herd immunity was never his aim. Swedes did hunker down, but on a voluntary basis. A mandatory lockdown, it was argued, was a huge untested experiment that could cause more harm than good.

The arrival of a second wave in Sweden does not contradict Tegnell’s overall point: that a pandemic kills people directly and indirectly, and a sensible government seeks to minimise both kinds of deaths. While its Prime Minister has introduced a “Rule of Eight”, the rest of the lockdown is – like last time – voluntary. For now at least, Sweden’s approach is still broadly the same: a voluntary lockdown. To level with the people, trust them and ask them. Diktats, Tegnell has argued, will always fail in a democracy. Lockdown fatigue sets in.

The Swedish lesson is proving truer for Britain than anyone in Government will admit. In obeying the orders of the NHS Covid-19 app, the Prime Minister knows that he’s in a small minority. Internal Government surveys show that those asked to self-isolate by the NHS app now ignore the advice nine times out of 10.

Inside No 10, the Prime Minister has been making the Swedish-style argument that, as he recently put it, “we can’t just keep infringing on people’s liberty when people won’t listen to it anyway”. He wants a Christmas exemption because he suspects that, without one, there would be lawbreaking on a mass scale. The nation would be driving home for Christmas, legally or not.

Those in Government urging the Prime Minister to “reset” his premiership like to say the “grownups” are now back in charge – so it’s time to adopt a “grown-up” tone. Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, talks about the need to move on from lockdown and “live without fear”, and his voice may be heard more now. The case is now being made inside No 10 for a “grown-up” conversation about lockdown: being honest about its side-effects and talking about the difficulty of striking a better balance.

There’s much to discuss. Every extra day of lockdown adds to the mental health toll, the under-diagnosis of cancer, the untreated heart disease and the general economic and social damage. So far, Mr Johnson’s advisers have taken a see-no-evil approach to all this and refused to publish any estimates. The Treasury recently admitted that it had not estimated the cost of this current lockdown, which tells you something about the maturity of the debate. And about the Prime Minister’s opportunity now.

He impressed his party yesterday with bold plans for a reformed modern military. He looked happier (videoing in from No 10 agrees with him more than the Commons chamber) and more in control. His environmental agenda, while radical, is perfectly plausible. But there’s a flaw. Britain may be a greener, better-defended country by the end of the decade – but a great many people are still wondering how they’re going to make it to the end of this year.

That’s why there will be no “reset” for his Government until he can break free from the cycle of lockdowns and find a better way through a crisis that has all too much life left in it.

follow Fraser Nelson on Twitter @Frasernelson; read more at telegraph.co.uk/ opinion