Tough choices in very tough times
Do we need a circuit-breaker lockdown in the Westcountry? asks Philip Bowern
KEIR Starmer has had a hard time of it. As the Labour leader who took control of the party in the middle of a grave national and global emergency he’s had a tricky path to steer. How best to play things when to criticise the Government might look like a failure to back the national fight against disease must have been the question constantly hammering away in the back of his mind. Support Boris and risk political irrelevance or challenge him and risk being seen as the politician undermining efforts to bring the virus under control...? Those conflicting views will have been playing on Sir Keir’s mind for months.
This week, however, he was handed a golden opportunity to land a serious blow on Boris and have the science to back it up. On Monday night it emerged in the minutes of the Sage committee that a call had been made by the scientific advisers in September for a socalled ‘circuit-breaker’ – a brief period of hard national lockdown to stop the spread of the disease and win a breathing space. That advice was rejected by the Government. Sir Keir saw his chance.
Captain Hindsight, as he has been branded by Boris, for again and again coming up with how things ought to have been done, was suddenly on the front foot. Following pretty much word-for-word the scientific advice he called for a national lockdown of two or three weeks.
Sir Keir said his proposal would “not mean schools closing” but it should “run across half-term to minimise disruption”. However, he said it would mean that “all pubs, bars and restaurants would be closed” and compensated “so that no business loses out because of the sacrifices we all need to make.” He went on: “The government has not got a credible plan to slow infections. It has lost control of the virus and it’s no longer following scientific advice. He suggested lockdown would also provide a chance for the government to “fix” problems by handing over track and trace responsibilities to local authorities.
The Labour leader’s clear policy, after months when he has sometimes looked to be struggling to produce anything meaningful beyond a critique of the Government’s performance, earned Sir Keir some significant praise. At last, many people said, clear blue water between the Tories, whose policies are looking increasingly shambolic and Labour with a proper plan to get the infection rate down and grab back control of the virus.
But is that the correct way to read things?
The science has been pretty clear throughout this pandemic and focused almost exclusively on controlling the virus. The Government, on the other hand, has to balance the risks of an out-of-control growth in cases of Covid-19 with the risk that comes with using heavy-handed national lockdown targets to suppress its spread. Rocks and hard places spring to mind. The
Government’s three-tier system can look a little like more bamboozling restrictions that serve only to confuse.
But here in the relatively lowCovid zone of the South West they have one big advantage: So long as our rates of infection lag a long way behind those of other parts of the country, we don’t need such Draconian lockdown measures. Our pubs, restaurants and other hospitality venues can stay open. We can continue to visit friends and family, providing we stick to the rule of six, socially distance and – where appropriate – wear a mask.
Under Sir Keir Starmer’s plan that would change. Bars and restaurants would shut; only essential travel would be allowed, all nonessential offices would have to send workers home, household mixing would end, apart from those households that had formed bubbles. Even Parliament would stop sitting in the House of Commons, moving to remote working.
That’s Labour’s plan, not just for the worst affected areas of Britain, where the number of new infections are growing at pace, day by day, but for here in the Westcountry too, where we have managed the pandemic better than in almost any other region, where we successfully welcomed millions of tourists in the summer and still saw the infection rate stay well below the national average and where we are – fingers crossed – still able to go about our business, our family life and our social life without too many restrictions. Do we need to say goodbye to all that that, Sir Keir, even for three weeks?
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