Keep our eyes on the prize? Not much fun in this dystopian tombola

The PM bounded into the press conference like a man reborn. Two weeks of entirely pointless confinement inside No 10 had clearly agreed with him. With his rosy cheeks and bouffant hair, Boris unveiled the tier lottery draw with game show host verve, every inch the Cabinet Office Chris Tarrant.

A raft of unenviable prizes were up for grabs in this tedious national tombola. Instead of wads of cash or a new washer-dryer, for those lucky souls in Tier 1 there was indoor mixing, travel, and even some limited spectator events.

For the Tier 2 majority, a mediocre consolation prize – equivalent to the Countdown teapot or a fax machine on The Generation Game – return to the rule of six (outdoors only), with limited service at pubs and restaurants.

For the poor souls of Tier 3 – no travel, takeaway-only meals – their prize seemed more like the witchetty grubs of I’m A Celebrity’s bushtucker trial. But recent months have induced such low expectations that to many people, the relative freedom does indeed feel like a win – or perhaps it’s simply Stockholm syndrome.

All this, insisted the Prime Minister, was part of a “winter plan”, based on careful analysis of the data. But like the randomly chosen boxes of Deal or No Deal, there seemed little rhyme or reason to the prize allocation. Suffolk, registering some of the lowest case numbers in the UK, was clearly robbed on Tier 2. The denizens of Kent suffered particularly from the Wheel of Fortune’s indiscriminate needle; from Tier 1 before lockdown to Tier 3 afterwards. Most of Tunbridge Wells will doubtless be writing in, “disgusted” tonight.

To the nation’s contestants, the PM offered fighting talk and inspiration: “You’ve got to keep your eyes on the prize”, he roared, hailing the success of Liverpool and Warrington which were released from Tier 3 bondage. In the Commons yesterday morning, Matt Hancock similarly applauded the residents of Cornwall, the Scilly Isles and the Isle of Wight for their vigilance. How thoughtless of the rest of us not to live on a sparselypopulated island. Must do better next time!

At times, the Prime Minister contradicted his co-hosts Whitty and Vallance outright. He unwittingly regurgitated the lockdown sceptic argument against full national closures by insisting “the tiered approach was working”, so let’s bring tiers back. Whitty then contradicted the PM in turn, noting that Tier 2 could only keep infections stable, while

Tier 1 would see them go up. Between the logical confusion and the logical conclusion I began to despair.

Everything, the PM insisted, hinged on the “million dollar question – how to keep people safe without retreating into a winter of hibernation?”

But Laura Kuenssberg sounded closer to the money later on when she asked: “What was the point of the England lockdown if more people are now moving into tougher restrictions than before?”

As for any hope of breaking free, the PM’S assurance “your tier is not your destiny … you have a means of escape” failed to convince. His highfalutin’ words made things seem less the jolly village tombola and more a dystopian Hunger Games.

And certainly, with 42 per cent of the country in Tier 1 before lockdown, now just one per cent – may the odds be ever in our favour.