What the commentators said
The PM’s “one more heave, chaps, the cavalry are coming” Covid message has not gone down well, said Freddie Sayers on UnHerd. If he thought all the good news on vaccines would make people more philosophical about lockdown rules, he now knows otherwise. The people of Tunbridge Wells certainly aren’t happy about the new rules, said Tom Whipple in The Times. Like many others across the country, they’re furious that they’re stuck in Tier 3 with the rest of their county, when their local area has a below-average rate of Covid. They have a point: this is unfair; but pandemic rules have to be a bit arbitrary. If you turn a remote Kent village with a nice pub into a Tier 1 enclave, it “won’t stay Tier 1 for long”.
Ministers would rather err on the side of caution until they see what effect Christmas has on Covid cases, said James Forsyth in the same paper. Since Canada celebrated Thanksgiving on 12 October, it has – perhaps not coincidentally – seen Covid cases shoot up from over 2,000 cases a day to 5,500. The tier rules are set to be reviewed on 16 December, and again in midJanuary, said Andrew Grice in The Independent, but few expect a significant relaxation of measures before Easter, given the likely course of the disease. Ministers fear February could be “the cruellest month”, as the NHS faces not just the virus, but flu and other winter pressures.
It’s odd that MPs should have chosen this moment, when “liberation is just around the corner”, to cut up rough, said Daniel Hannan in The Daily Telegraph. No one likes the lockdown, but it’s not as if the PM is inflicting uniquely onerous conditions on England. France has closed all bars and restaurants until 20 January and it is about to impose a curfew, like Italy and Spain. People might have cut the Government more slack, said Stephen Bush in the New Statesman, had it been more open about its decisions. None of the data it has used to formulate its Covid policy is particularly sensitive or confidential, so why hasn’t it just shared it all, rather than always forcing critics to drag the facts out? It’s one thing for people to know that there is a ban on indoor mixing, but it’s better to help them understand why that ban is necessary.