We’re adults, so let us get on with our lives

IF, after days of increasingly dispiriting briefings, Boris Johnson announces this afternoon that Freedom Day will go ahead as scheduled on June 21, it will be nothing short of a thunderbolt.

Far from the exhilarating prospect of normal life returning as promised, the Prime Minister looks certain to dash the nation’s dreams by ordering a four-week delay on his road map to complete freedom.

We are, of course, depressingly familiar with false dawns and setbacks on the long march out of the pandemic.

But for the public and businesses who have stoically tolerated ruinous restrictions to turn the tide on Covid, this is an especially cruel blow.

After all, thanks to our world-beating vaccine blitz, nearly everybody vulnerable to the virus now has impressive levels of protection against it.

What’s more, failing to unlock Britain makes a mockery of Mr Johnson’s braggadocious G7 summit claims that Britain is open to the globe.

To the contrary, despite the runaway jabs success, a ‘Closed’ sign hangs on the country’s door.

The goalposts have been shifted once again due to the rapid spread of the new Indian, or Delta, variant of the disease.

True, cases have jumped by one third in a week. encouragingly though, that hasn’t so far translated into a surge in deaths and hospital admissions.

Yet, his ears ringing with blood-curdling warnings from scientists and health commissars that urgent action is needed to avert catastrophe, Boris has bottled the opportunity to fully emancipate us.

It is the bitterest irony that if he had displayed such caution instead of dithering before putting India on the ‘red’ travel list – and even then allowing thousands in without hotel quarantine – we might not be up this gum tree.

If Britain doesn’t open up now, then when? Drunk on power, the scientific establishment’s zero- Covid zealots will surely bully jittery Mr Johnson into extending lockdown time and again.

Won’t a four-week deferral become eight weeks? Or three months? Or even, as reported yesterday, shunted into the spring? That would be truly horrifying.

The danger is that the scaffolding of invasive control will never be dismantled.

To proceed so timorously when the vaccines clearly work is absurd.

even a month’s delay will be the final straw for many businesses unable to work at full throttle, especially in hospitality, entertainment and travel. Then there is the NHS backlog of patients and the timebomb of mental illness.

The PM accepts Covid will never be eradicated and that we must live with it. Now’s the time to show some common sense and end this hellish paralysis.

lift the restrictions. Advise the unvaccinated to be vigilant. Treat people like grown-ups. let us get on with our lives.