This government is in over its head when it comes to sending clear messages

Once again the Boris Johnson government displays a talent for self-parody that makes Britain world class in this field at least, challenged only by Donald Trump’s America.

The imposition, without a hint of warning, of renewed quarantine 14-day requirements on British tourists returning from Spain caught out at least one Conservative MP – Grant Shapps. As Mr Shapps is the current

secretary of state for transport, the ironies are already deep.

As one of the group of ministers responsible for deciding on travel bans and quarantining, presumably Mr Shapps was a participant in the talks that signed off the new rules. Thus, the Shapps family will have a further fortnight to enjoy one another’s company when they return from their holiday.

This episode draws attention, it’s worth pointing out, to just how woefully underpowered the Johnson cabinet is and, thus, must partly explain the unhealthy hegemony of Dominic Cummings at the heart of government. Maybe filling the cabinet room with a collection of bluffers and duffers was part of some sinister Cummings masterplan to take over Britain; if so, it is working out very well indeed for him.

It is, though, a deeply unfunny matter for those who booked their usual fortnight in Tenerife or a pleasant long weekend in Barcelona. They took the government’s fresh recent guidance on travel at face value, and ordered their tickets in good faith. They read all the headlines about liberation and freedom, and took their chance to try to return to the normality Boris Johnson dangled in front of them. Spain is dangerous enough to require quarantine on their return, but not for them to come home early and avoid further exposure.

True, there is an element of the unexpected and of bad luck in all this, but it has not been handled deftly. The situation in parts of Spain is not that much of a shock. The point about laughing at Mr Shapps is that this mess further erodes public confidence in official Covid-19 guidance. It has been going downhill ever since Mr Cummings decided to take his ill-starred sojourn in County Durham, and a bewildering run of mixed messaging and general confusion since hasn’t helped.

The public is these days asked to exercise common sense; well, where is the common sense in booking holidays now? The impact on airlines, the travel trade and hard-pressed economies such as Spain, Italy and Greece will be grim.

A pattern has been forming in recent months, which is that the previously highly effective lockdown, having been implemented late, has been relaxed in too much of a hurry. The government, in England at any rate, has been taking too many risks with other people’s lives and other people’s jobs.

Decision-making has been slow but then rushed, as in the various changes to quarantine, which has become an outstanding example of poor, that is ineffective, policymaking. Who, for example, is to police the whereabouts of the thousands of British residents returning from Spain? What is the incentive, aside from a much-abused sense of civic duty, for anyone to take time off work and lock themselves away until their tan fades? How many prosecutions for violations have been brought by Priti Patel’s misguided zealotry? None.

And so a bewildered public waits with some trepidation for the second wave of infections, which they widely expect to arrive in the winter. For once the government seems aware of the looming crisis and is making preparations to deal with a quadruple whammy of coronavirus, seasonal flu, floods and no-deal Brexit.

That does not mean that the preparations will be the right ones, or that they will be delivered on time, nor that the public, and business, will be given clear and unequivocal guidance. Not much can be done to influence the arrival of another round of Covid-19, the flu or floods, but ministers could make things better and save lives by delaying the end of the Brexit transition period by a few months next year, by which point it might be safe to go on holiday again. Maybe Mr Shapps will give us a clue.