Ignore the hysteria: 2022 will be the year that we get back to normal

There will be no more lockdowns, Boris will keep his job and the health – service will stagger on

As is my custom, I will devote this first column of the new year to negative predictions: things that will not happen in 2022. First must be the matter which directly impinges on most of our lives. There will be no further lockdowns of either the mandated kind or the more insidious psychologically coercive sort. Lockdowns are over. This is not only because they do devastating economic damage which the Left obtusely believes is of concern only to rampant capitalists – but because they are now clearly seen as a danger to our fundamental constitutional principles.

Putting an entire population under house arrest, intervening explicitly in the most intimate areas of private relationships, and prohibiting personal contact of the kind that was once believed to be essential to normal life, is now seen by virtually everyone who is not an aspiring totalitarian as unacceptable. Because the only official parliamentary opposition to these measures has come, not from the official opposition parties but from the Government’s own backbenches, it will be suggested by much of the media that the Prime Minister has only renounced further lockdowns under threat of rebellion within his party.

This is deeply unfortunate for Boris Johnson’s own credibility. Even if he were now to make an overwhelmingly convincing case for refusing to impose severe restrictions on ordinary life ever again, his sincerity would be questionable. It will be believed – even without the reiteration of that message by the broadcast media – that he has only come to that conclusion because he was forced to do so. In fact, there is a more profound case against extreme social restrictions than even those that the Tory rebels usually present – and Downing Street is almost certainly aware of it. That is, that the people simply will not submit to them any longer.

Had the Government, for example, tried to “cancel Christmas”, as the headlines put it, or if it were to act once again to prevent families and friends from meeting, there would have been (and would be into the foreseeable future) mass civil disobedience. You can only suppress normal human impulses for so long. This widespread social resistance would have a devastating consequence for the stability of our political system. The moral authority of democratically elected government would be undermined to an extent that might be irreparable. The thought of being responsible for that catastrophe is the real reason why the Johnson Government will not try to impose further lockdowns.

This brings us to the second anti-prediction. In spite of the comments above, I do not believe that Boris Johnson will be replaced as Conservative leader this year. There are, of course, purely practical reasons for this. There may be a couple of reasonably plausible replacements on the scene but none who have overwhelmingly proved either their capability to do the job or to win a general election.

Also, there is the matter of changing leaders in the immediate aftermath of a national emergency. This would appear, quite rightly, to be a monumental self-indulgence. So Boris will stay – but his standing with the electorate will probably never be restored. Even if the country recovers from the pandemic without any major setbacks and the economy then takes off like a rocket, his Government may not get the credit for this success.

There is historic precedent for such an eventuality. When the UK fell out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM) on Black Wednesday in 1992, John Major’s government suffered an ignominious failure of public confidence from which it did not recover – in spite of the glorious economic boom that followed. An eventual happy ending to the present tribulations will not necessarily redeem the Johnson leadership if it appears to have happened in spite of his judgment rather than because of it.

This brings us to the third item on my list: the planned increase in National Insurance contributions will not go ahead. It will be postponed for a year – which is to say, indefinitely. Pressures on the cost of living which will make almost everybody poorer, colder and angrier will be quite enough without the Government introducing what will clearly be a general tax rise, whatever vague promises it makes about the extra funding going – eventually, at some date yet to be determined – towards an as yet unspecified social care plan. Or even to the NHS which is beginning to seem to most people, whatever they tell the opinion pollsters, like a bottomless money pit.

But – fourth on the list – there will be no official reform of the funding model for the health service because that is a step into the abyss for a Tory government.

In truth, the basic funding mechanism in which all medical care is free at the point of use and paid for out of general taxation, need not be addressed just yet in order to make some tangible improvements in the quality of the service. There might easily be – in fact, will have to be – some fairly radical reforms which could happen under the radar, and which even the public sector unions would find hard to attack.

If primary care is to remain the gateway to all NHS services, it will have to evolve into a form that is much more accessible and productive. The large GP practices which the Government has encouraged could gradually be transformed into the polyclinics once planned and then disappointingly abandoned, with facilities for X-rays, blood testing and minor surgery, and walk-in clinics to take pressure off hospital A&E departments.

A few things that won’t happen in the rest of the world: Russia will not invade Ukraine. The Biden administration will not learn the lesson from its withdrawal from Afghanistan and will continue to throw Nato into existential confusion by making backchannel deals with Putin. The EU will not collapse because its institutions are now indispensable to member states who have forgotten how to govern themselves.

And thus will life, and politics, return to something recognisably normal.

There will be no official reform of the funding model for the health service because that is a step into the abyss for a Tory government