Covid’s second coming: how did Britain get back in this mess?
It is the kind of scene that is now a distant memory in the UK. Some 6,000 miles away, Taipei’s Pawnshop club is crammed every Friday and Saturday evening with sweaty crowds dancing under wreaths of smoke, and jostling each other at the bar for drinks.
Here, the only reminders of coronavirus are on the door, where punters have their temperatures checked and scan a QR code to enter their contact details.
Taiwan’s strict coronavirus controls means only citizens, long-term residents and travellers with business visas are allowed in, and anyone coming from abroad must spend two weeks in a quarantine hotel. Once that time is up, they emerge into a normality unimaginable in much of the rest of the world.
As of 24 September, only 507 Covid-19 cases and seven deaths have been reported in the country; there hasn’t been a single domestic transmission since 8 April. So far at least, there has been no sign of a second wave, not even a ripple.
Clubbers heading to Pawnshop rub shoulders with fitness devotees going for a workout at a 24-hour gym. Down the road at the Tonghua night market, groups of friends and families sit elbow to elbow, sharing plates of fried tofu, barbecued meats and spring onion pancakes.
There are some reminders of the pandemic woven into daily life. Masks are required on public transport, and temperatures are taken on entry to most buildings. But early and effective action by Taiwanese authorities means that people can largely relax. They are watching the tragedies unfolding in so many other places with horror and incomprehension.
“It’s painful for me to hear these stories from the UK and the US,” says Popcorn, a drag queen whose eclectic act at the Cafe Dalida bar involves the type of audience interaction that would be impossible even in performance venues attempting to reopen in the UK.
“Knowing what’s possible, and seeing what’s actually happening… it’s sad.”
Back in April – when Taiwan had its last case, and China, where the virus almost certainly originated, was also getting the disease under control – Boris Johnson believed that what those countries had achieved was possible in Britain too. The corner was being turned.
Soon after his own brush with Covid-19 in early spring, the prime minister was full of optimism and combative talk. On 27 April he told the nation it would not be long: “If this virus were a physical assailant, an unexpected and invisible mugger – which I can tell you from personal experience, it is – then this is the moment when we have begun together to wrestle it to the floor... the moment we can press home our advantage.”
On 1 June, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, also believed the virus was in retreat. “The data show we are winning the battle against coronavirus. Today we are therefore able to make some cautious changes to the lockdown rules, carefully and safely,” he said.
Last Tuesday, however, the UK went backwards, tightening restrictions again. Suddenly cases were doubling every seven days, increasing at rates not seen since March. Scientists had warned in the summer that easing off too soon and too fast in response to pressure from Covid-doubting Tory MPs and businesses could allow the virus to return, and it has done just that – with a vengeance.
The public was bemused at this latest U-turn, as was much of the normally Tory-supporting media. The Daily Mail, which appears to be selling shares in Johnson as fast as Covid-19 infections are rising again, was scathing in an editorial. It was furious not only that new lockdowns loomed but that Johnson’s government was failing to take the people, or even MPs, with it. “Depressingly, this authoritarian nightmare is likely to drag on for another six months,” it said.
It also articulated the key debate which now splits the Conservative party, the cabinet and the country – and over which No 10 appears completely undecided itself. “Does the PM really want Britain to oscillate interminably in and out of lockdown to try to avoid even a single casualty? Or do we accept the contagion in our midst, protect the vulnerable and get on with the business of living?”
The mix of anger and confusion was unsurprising. It was, after all, less than three weeks since Johnson had been enthusiastically urging people to return to work; three weeks since schools had reopened because ministers had insisted they were safe. And the hugely popular and successful “eat out to help out” scheme had ended as recently as 1 September, having brought the hospitality sector back to life and coaxed people out of their homes to spend again.
Government advice had chopped and changed often in the previous six months, but this was the sharpest readjustment of all. “I think we are going down the Swanee,” said a despairing Labour MP last week as he pondered the multiple disasters of Covid-19, the switches in government policy towards it, and the Brexit internal market bill which Johnson had brought to the Commons to allow him to break international law.
“We are supposed to be a great country but we are an embarrassment,” said the shadow minister. “We can’t deal with this bloody virus and our government trashes the law. And I just despair.”
MPs knew they would face the wrath of constituents when they returned home this weekend. Pubs and restaurants, which had only just got used to serving under Covid safety requirements – measures that had cost them dearly to introduce – would have to close at 10pm and begin turfing out drinkers well before. “It is tragic for them,” said a senior Tory. “They have