The lure of lockdown

SIR – Daniel Hannan is a valiant defender of liberty (Comment, July 11), but he fails to consider the reasons why so many people support draconian restrictions on freedom. Not all of those reasons are irrational.

My wife runs a small Airbnb property, and many guests come to escape London and other big cities. Hearing their horrendous accounts of the intolerable noise and disruption many suffer in their daily (and nightly) lives, I can understand why they might support extreme measures like curfews and the closure of nightclubs. My postbag from the small city of Canterbury, where I was an MP, used to be full of similar material.

For those of us privileged to live in quiet, pleasant neighbourhoods, it is hardly fair to scoff at people who are sick of living among broken windows, discarded rubbish and foul language, with anti-social neighbours – people for whom a good night’s sleep is a distant aspiration.

Conservatives should believe in liberty, but without the means to produce better citizens – from responsible families to discipline in schools – liberty degenerates into licence, and shrinking the state just leaves a vacuum; that means misery for those in crowded, broken neighbourhoods.

Fortunately, Boris Johnson understands this; one of his first acts as Mayor of London was to ban alcohol on the Tube. When rioting came, he ordered water cannon (blocked by the then Home Secretary, Theresa May). Sir Julian Brazier

Canterbury, Kent