The PM needs a lockdown exit plan

The situation is bleak. Test-and-trace is failing. There are fears that the NHS has squandered its chance to radically improve capacity in advance of a predictably grim winter. All the while, an alliance of pro-shutdown scientists and a cynically opportunistic Labour Party is trying to force the Government into a national “circuit breaker” lockdown which would only delay the virus, not defeat it.

The Prime Minister is right to resist them: places with low infection rates should not be punished just because the virus is spreading elsewhere. But the costs of his alternative regional approach are mounting too. Over half the population is now living under some form of enhanced restrictions, and everywhere families are being kept apart and society damaged by the absurd rule of six. London, Birmingham and Manchester have all been placed in tier 2, with indoor mixing of households banned, crushing the recovery in the hospitality sector. But why have areas with vastly different infection rates been lumped together? The failure to produce a clear list of criteria under which regions move up tiers places the whole country in jeopardy, living in fear that they next might suddenly be subjected to fresh restrictions.

The absence of an exit strategy is also intolerable. If the new measures fail to work, the result cannot be a tightening ratchet of restrictions such that we enter lockdown in all but name. Nor is it acceptable that there is so little clarity over how regions can be released from measures. If NHS capacity turns out to be sufficient to meet demand, the result should be a liberalisation of the rules even if the infection rate remains high. These mini-lockdowns cannot be allowed to become indefinite, with the hurdles for leaving them higher than for going in.

This is a period of acute political risk for the Prime Minister. There are signs that Tory voters are cooling in their support for tough new measures, even if broader opinion is behind them. The costs of the original lockdown are becoming apparent, having been hidden behind billions of taxpayer support. Ministers may be forgiven for their errors in the first wave of the virus. They are not likely to be so lucky the second time around.