Boris’s crude tier system has only inflamed the anti-lockdown revolt
It may be a better way of making lockdown decisions, but MPS are still being left deeply frustrated
It’s now almost 75 years since Albert Camus wrote The Plague, but his novel perfectly anticipates the coronavirus: its trajectory, its mysteries, the public reaction and the lockdowns. Its hero, Dr Rieux, says there’s no point getting angry about quirks in quarantine orders: “I know very well that this whole business is stupid,” he says. “But we are all involved. We must accept things as they are.” He had a point: if you keep searching for logic where there is none, it can drive you mad. As several Tory MPS have been finding out.
Lockdown is ending because the Prime Minister knows his party would rebel if he tried to extend it. He wouldn’t be defeated, given Keir Starmer’s offer of votes, but to rely on Labour for a flagship policy would mark a dangerous erosion of authority. As one Tory grandee puts it: “A government that needs the Opposition to get its agenda through tends not to be a government for very long.” In the socially distanced tea rooms, there has been talk about a post-boris era. Some MPS even claim to have sent in letters requesting a leadership challenge.
It all sounds a bit ungrateful, given that it’s not even a year since Boris
Johnson personally won an 80-strong majority for his otherwise-doomed party. But many Tories feel that a national collapse is under way, because the Government cannot think its way out of lockdown. Last week, the Chief Whip finally persuaded the Prime Minister of the seriousness of the situation: there are now about 100 MPS in the “Covid group” of rebels. They wanted a local lockdown system, judged on clear criteria and answerable to parliamentary scrutiny.
What they got yesterday was intended to quell the mutiny. No more Vallance and Whitty horror shows, with blood-curdling slides drawn from data that falls apart on further scrutiny. No more “illustrations” or “scenarios” showing 50,000 cases a day or 4,000 daily deaths. In its place, new criteria for judging local lockdowns: virus infection levels, especially among the elderly. The rate of virus growth (or decline). Pressure on the NHS.
In theory, it’s just what lockdown sceptics asked for: a transparent, evidence-based way of judging the new system. But the way the map has been drawn has led even prolockdown MPS into revolt as many find their constituency under tougher restrictions than before lockdown. They ask why their constituency has been lumped with others – and how they can justify voting it through. “This is like one of these old colonial maps where they draw a marker pen through territory they don’t recognise,” says one MP.
Any Covid map was going to be crude, but some places are cruder than others. Kent is regarded as one homogeneous lump and has been placed into Tier 3, despite having had no special restrictions before lockdown. All of Buckinghamshire has ended up in Tier 2, in spite of places like the Chilterns being almost as Covid-light as Cornwall and the Isle of Wight. York, too, is back in Tier 2 – in spite of having less Covid than before lockdown. In the Commons yesterday, MPS queued up to ask: where is the logic?
Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, promised to answer them in full, publishing the justification for each local decision and reviewing it every week. This makes sense: the Covid picture changes regularly, with granular test information now available for every part of Britain. There could, in theory, be downgrades of tier status every Thursday. The problem is that MPS suspect this is all a ruse, that Hancock’s weekly meetings will be a formality and that his new Covid map will be here until Valentine’s Day.
They have a point. What Hancock didn’t say yesterday is that his advisers are terrified of a virus resurgence after Christmas and are unlikely to loosen anyone’s tiers until then. Jonathan Van-tam, the deputy chief medical officer, has asked people not to “tear the pants off ” the five-day festive reprieve. It could be the end of January until officials have enough data to judge whether this happened. Although Hancock has promised to be bound by fixed criteria for deciding tier status, he can interpret this any way he likes.
Tories wanting to know how they can get their constituency downgraded have been told about mass testing, where an area is flooded with instant tests administered by the Army. That would be more persuasive had things in Liverpool worked out differently. The Health Secretary is quite right to say cases in the city are a quarter of what they once were, but he doesn’t say that most of the decline had happened before the mass testing pilot. And anyway, Chris Whitty argues that anywhere joining Cornwall in Tier 1 will – at present – see Covid levels rise. So for 98 per cent of England, the three-tier system is really more of a two-tier system.
No 10 has made one final offering: to publish assessments of what local lockdowns do to the economy, society and wider public health. This is intended to persuade MPS that the Prime Minister will now look at things in the round and judge local lockdowns by more than simply the virus levels. This would do much to assuage those who argue that officials should talk about risk to cancer treatment, or the chances of furloughed small businesses making it to Easter.
But those who have seen the ideas for the report predict that it will be underwhelming, and unlikely to win over any wavering MPS. Last night’s No 10 press conference sounded the same as always: plenty of talk about the virus but not much on unemployment, the effects of loneliness and isolation, cancer diagnoses or the wider issues that lockdown is likely to bequeath. It’s a horrible balance to have to strike. But still, even now, we hear very little acknowledgement of what lies on the other side of the ledger.
The new system is a better way of making lockdown decisions. But as MPS are beginning to work out, they stand precious little chance of appealing or making any changes in the new Covid map.
“By April, things genuinely will be much, much better,” the Prime Minister said last night. Which might be his way of saying that, until then, not much will change – and we’d all best get used to another new normal.