The chilling truth is that lockdown is still popular

For all the anger at No10’s Christmas hypocrisy, swathes of the public will welcome new restrictions

There we all were, cheek by jowl, on the rammed to bursting point London Underground, a Covid superspreader sea of mask-wearing humanity. Then into our midst steps a maskless man. “Why are you not wearing a mask?” an elderly passenger demands to know. “It’s extremely selfish of you.”

“Is that so?” he replies, with studied indifference. The mood of angry disapproval was tangible. We all have to accept the Government’s instruction, so what gives you the right to ignore it, was the unspoken, mass response. The man himself was plainly revelling in his contempt for the rules, but his defiance drew little, if any, sympathy from the crowd.

It made me think. Not only do the public remain overwhelmingly compliant when it comes to the reimposition of Covid restrictions, but by and large, they don’t particularly mind them either. Indeed, many people even seem to find a kind of collective comfort in their authoritarian suppression of individual liberties. One thing the pandemic lockdowns have taught us is that love of freedom is easily subverted.

Whether high levels of compliance will still be the case after the scandal of “Partygate” remains to be seen. A disregard as crass and contemptuous as No 10’s for its own rules is hard to imagine. If bringing forward the announcement of Plan B Covid restrictions was meant to distract attention from the Downing Street video – the notorious “dead cat” ploy by which you give them something else to talk about by slapping a deceased feline on the table – it plainly backfired.

Not so much dead cat as pouring oil on the flames. You must work from home if you can, but you are allowed to go to the office party and generally socialise all you want. Logically, it doesn’t make any sense; it was as if Downing Street was retrofitting the rules to justify its own misdemeanours. The announcement has served only further to feed the frenzy of denunciation that Downing Street so desperately wants to bury.

That Boris Johnson’s brief reign may now effectively be over no longer seems to me to be in any doubt. One deceit and mishap follows another. Once much of the press has got it in for a prime minister, the end is never long in coming. Yet the rank hypocrisy of the proselytising mob is a sight to behold.

The current outpouring of sanctimonious humbug is reminiscent of the infamous “It is a Moral Issue” editorial in The Times over the Profumo affair, which accused the then Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, of “debauching the nation”. Absurd though the depiction was, it neatly summarised the hysteria of the time. Within days he was gone.

The same feeling of lost authority and trust rules today. Underlying it all is a general sense of disillusionment with a government that so far has been unable to deliver a single tangible benefit from its overarching mission – delivering Brexit.

The opportunity for significant divergence from Europe has been repeatedly squandered.

For a substantial minority of his own party, moreover, the Prime Minister has committed what is to them the double sin of beginning the march back into lockdown. For some on the backbenches, this was even more offensive than the sniggering over the Downing Street party.

I’m not altogether sure, however, that the same libertarian outrage is shared by the public at large. Work from home in the runup to Christmas, but don’t worry, you are perfectly entitled to go for a knees-up with work colleagues, eat and drink in bars and restaurants, attend mass sports events, arrange family gatherings, and so on. What’s not to like?

Admittedly, things may not be quite as feather-nested as they were during previous rounds of lockdown; there’s no furlough this time, or soft loans for the travel, hospitality, retail and events businesses most impacted by the restrictions. The Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, is adamant that he is not going to reintroduce them. For some workers and businesses, real financial hardship looms.

But for the great bulk of the population, the latest instruction is only a mild inconvenience, and in some respects even a welcome one. Stay at home, but feel free to socialise? What more could you want for the festive season?

The sense of moral outrage over rule-breaking nevertheless continues to mount, fed by a constant diet of emotionally charged stories from the broadcasters on those forced to isolate while loved ones died and Downing Street officials partied into the night.

It’s no excuse for what happened. The injustice of it all is undeniable. But there is a certain amount of cant in much of the outrage. Who can put their hand on their heart and say they obeyed every letter of what were often ambiguous or senseless instructions?

Whether justified by the science or not, next week’s lockdown-lite is scarcely a great hardship for much of middle-class and public sector Britain. Many will positively celebrate it. You cannot help thinking that the public gets the Government it deserves.