Circuit-break could switch off economy

IN1923 a German engineer called Hugo Stotz invented the world’s first circuit-breaker, which revolutionised electricity as a safe form of domestic and commercial energy.

Little did Stotz realise that his invention would also give birth to the public health catchphrase which is now dominating debate in this country over how to stop coronavirus.

As the vast majority of us have electrical circuit-breakers in our homes we are all too aware that on occasions they switch everything off. What we do then is flip the switch and get the electricity running again. But if there is an ongoing fault the switch will continue to flip and break the circuit, leaving us without power.

The analogy is perfect for what is going on with coronavirus and why Downing Street is currently right to resist a nationwide circuitbreak. Covid-19 is not a one-off surge which will simply go away by breaking the circuit; it is an ongoing problem.

The Government’s analysis that if you use the circuit-break method once you have to keep using it leading to a long lockdown is probably correct.

In this case switching off the power is switching off the economy. Businesses and jobs only survived the first lockdown because the Government bailed them out. It seems unlikely that the public finances could repeat this exercise.

A collapsed economy will have far worse consequences long term than even Covid-19.

It is also deeply unfair that figures like Andy Burnham should try to hold parts of the country with low infection rates to ransom before taking the measures necessary in Manchester.

And, as for Wales’s Labour First Minister Mark Drakeford, he will put the future of businesses and jobs in Wales in grave danger in what may boil down to just an exercise in power.

Stotz’s invention did wonders for electrical power. But let us not try to replicate it in public policy before localised action, favoured by the Government, has the chance to work.