How many more times must we suffer this dimming of the light?

THE British people could be forgiven for thinking that they are trapped in a recurring nightmare. Time and again, normality and the customary pleasures of unlocked life seem to be within reach.

Restrictions are relaxed and some limited enjoyment is possible. Schools reopen, up to a point. Time and again these freedoms are snatched away once more, and postponed till heaven knows when. And then it happens again. And again.

How many more times is it going to happen? How many times must we endure being told by our leaders that they are – oh, so reluctantly and with ‘a very heavy heart’ – taking away some more of our precious freedoms, throttling even more businesses and cancelling more jobs.

And for the first time since the 17th Century, Government is actually telling us how we may (or may not) celebrate the unique, treasured feast of Christmas. This time it is supposed to be to deal with a new fast-spreading variant of the virus, even though experts admit that its effects are no more serious than the existing one.

Is there any actual end to all this, or shall we be anticipating our next release when a new, completely different virus descends on us and begins the whole cycle again, cancelling next Christmas, too?

We have to take these things on trust, and our trust is sometimes abused – as we saw with the dodgy graphs used to justify the last lockdown. For, make no mistake, the measures now being imposed on parts of the UK are a return to the most stringent restrictions of last spring.

The Government shows no enthusiasm for toning down its measures, but is always willing to ratchet them up.

We are told that the possible spread of the new strain is so risky that it is worth doing grave economic damage, and more or less suppressing Christmas, to forestall it.

But as so many previous measures have failed to release us from our Covid bonds, why should this one work?

Amid all these events the one real hope has been the vaccines, an amazing medical and scientific triumph.

Millions have been cheered by this development. For a short while it looked as if there was a real growing light at the end of the tunnel.

But these new limits – including the devastating announcement yesterday of a three-week Level 4 lockdown and school closure plan in Scotland – dim that light. The experts, and the

Ministers who have listened to them, had better be right, because the cost of this is not just to the liberty and happiness of the British people.

The effects of this permanent emergency on treatment of cancer, heart disease and other serious complaints have been severe, and it is very likely that a final audit will show that they have led to many needless deaths.

The impact on mental illness is also very disturbing, especially among the lonely and the formerly healthy elderly, deprived for months of things that gave their lives meaning.

We can only hope that these measures rapidly have the intended effect, and do not have too many painful unintended consequences.

But MPs and MSPs should submit them to severe examination, and – as we have urged before – Boris Johnson would do well to widen his base of advisers, and consider more carefully the effects of his decisions.