Has Boris come to a fork in the road?
BORIS Johnson will steer the country past another landmark pinpointed on his roadmap out of the Covid lockdown next week. On Monday, the Prime Minister’s stay-at-home order across England expires on the latest leg of the long, slow journey towards freedom.
Yet like bored children strapped in the back, many of his backbenchers are asking: “Are we there yet?” Some increasingly fear the expedition will never end.
“I am worried we are heading towards a checkpoint society,” said one Tory MP concerned about government proposals emerging for the post-lockdown era. Vaccination certificates for pub customers, regular mandatory Covid tests and mobile phone apps carrying details of health status have all been floated by Mr Johnson and ministers in recent days.
At a Commons committee hearing on Wednesday, the Prime Minister repeated his hope that “all” Covid regulations will end on June 21 at the scheduled final destination of his roadmap.
Yet the signs are increasing that some emergency Covid rules are threatening to become permanent in the same way that the temporary limits on pub opening hours introduced under the Defence of the Realm Act at the start of the First World War were never repealed.
Some Tory MPs are questioning whether the mass vaccination programme really will prove to be the passport back to freedom that ministers promised. And the ranks of those wanting a faster exit from restrictions are swelling. Thirty-five Tory rebels were among the 76 MPs who voted against the renewal of Covid powers on Thursday.
Sir Charles Walker has emerged on the Tory back benches as an outspoken critic of the dangers of creeping authoritarianism. “Unless you cherish freedoms every day, unless you fight for freedoms every day, they end up being taken away from you,” he said in the debate.
Some opposition MPs are also now speaking out against the continuation of rules. At Prime Minister’s Questions the previous day, Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey urged Mr Johnson to “drop these draconian laws and instead publish a roadmap to revive civil liberties and freedoms in our country”.
Sir Ed should be careful – liberalism just might catch on in his bossyboots party.
Mr Johnson has repeatedly trumpeted his libertarian instincts and was reluctant to impose mandatory restrictions early in the pandemic.
He once famously said of the proposals for identity cards championed by the last Labour government: “If I am ever asked to produce my ID card as evidence that I am who I say I am, when I have done nothing wrong, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it in the presence of whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”
GIVEN his insistence yesterday that “the basic concept of vaccine certification should not be totally alien to us”, he does not sound like he is considering snacking on his blue “I’ve had my Covid vaccination” card any time soon.
He appears reluctant to reprise his hero Winston Churchill’s campaign for a bonfire of regulations after the Second World War. The past year has left Downing Street erring towards caution rather than risk.
Westminster’s last parliament was bitterly split on Brexit between Remainers and Leavers.
In the new Commons, the fresh divide is increasingly between the libertarians and public health securocrats. So far, the Prime Minister seems unsure about which of the two sides he is on.