A government-created culture of fear is now our greatest danger

The hostile reaction to reopening has betrayed just how hard it will be to return to normality

Fear is so much easier to incite than to dispel. We were reminded of that when the Prime Minister announced what is likely to be the imminent end of the last remaining restrictions on normal life in England. The farrago of public criticism was, by the standards of recent hysteria, mercifully small, but it still had the intended effect on public discourse. Because it was now likely to happen earlier than first predicted, the removal of those last rules was described as “premature”.

Even though the original planned date had never been anything more than an estimate based primarily on how severe the omicron variant turned out to be, it had now taken on the sanctity of a revealed truth which must not be contravened. This analysis was taken seriously by the media and thus inevitably by a significant proportion of the population.

More specifically, and damningly, the announcement was derided as a “political” decision, rather than a “scientific” one. Well yes, of course it was a political decision in the strict literal sense of the word, because it was a decision made by elected political leaders which is the way, at least for the moment, we still do things in a democracy.

What this meant was that it took in a much wider set of considerations that impacted on society and the economy than the (rapidly diminishing) effects of Covid, which were the specific focus of those scientists – whose advice had now presumably been placed in a broader context than it was at the height of their influence. But what the scientists who queued up for their broadcasting appearances were implying was itself very “political”.

They were criticising Boris Johnson for making a public health pronouncement for opportunistic reasons: simply to boost his own popularity when he was in electoral danger. So they were, by trying to undermine public confidence in his decision, playing politics too – which, as unelected advisers (whose earlier forecast of what would be the appropriate moment to end regulations had always been provisional) was quite inappropriate. Wasn’t there something oddly disproportionate in the outrage over putting an end to what are, in truth, only very minimal restrictions? What was actually at the heart of this alarm seemed to be a sense that the Government was brazenly declaring a definitive end to the Covid chapter of our history: that’s it, all finished, you can go back to life as you have known it.

But it is not just sidelined experts who have expressed doubt about this return to normality. Nor is it only those who have obviously benefited in terms of personal convenience or reduced costs. There is a phenomenon that is much more profound and dangerous at the root of this which we may perhaps, in our modern vanity, have thought we would never see again.

Ironically, it is the thing that science and the technical progress to which it has led, was supposed to prevent forever: the willingness of human beings – as individuals and communities – to embrace fear. And I do mean “embrace”. Not just to accept the reality of danger, or to flee from realistic threats – those tendencies exist for sound evolutionary reasons.

The capacity for anxiety is essential to survival. No, what has happened over the past two years has been nothing less than the spread of an addiction to fear sometimes enforced by law but often simply produced by psychological coercion – which was taken up with startling alacrity by virtually the entire country.

This was the sort of chronic, disabling fear – as we can see clearly now from those who are reluctant to give it up – that becomes almost impossible to relinquish: a habitual dependency quite like a drug which renders life outside its remit intolerable. (One sees this sort of syndrome in children and adolescents who have become so conditioned by terrifying early experiences that they are primed to perceive danger in every life situation.)

There is now a proportion of the population which is, in effect, refusing to leave the imprisonment which it concluded was the only safe refuge. What is more, many people are arguing that nobody should be released until some undefined state of absolute safety for everyone (even the seriously ill or vulnerable) can be guaranteed. This demand is both logically impossible and morally unacceptable and yet – in the bizarre state of mind that has been induced over the past two years – it is being seriously entertained.

We know how we got here. By a brilliantly sustained orchestration of opinion-forming techniques that was so blindingly successful that it took even its designers by surprise. What needs to be discussed now as a matter of urgency is just how dangerous the result has been. What happens when people become truly terrified – so fearful that they are prepared to sacrifice much of what makes life worth living? They become obedient, docile and passive – which was the whole point of this programme after all. If that passivity – that relinquishing of free will – persists long enough, they become incapable of making individual choices, of taking initiative, of inventing brave advances that might alter their own condition and that of others.

Once launched, a campaign to cause widespread fear cannot – as the Government discovered last week – just be stopped in its tracks. You can’t just blow a whistle as if it were the end of the football match and expect everything to resume. Fear is disabling: it makes people feel helpless. But, perversely, it is also habit-forming. The sense that your fate is out of your control can be comfortable. Just do as you are told.

If it goes wrong, it will be somebody else’s fault.

This might be the greatest danger from which we have just managed to escape. Everything in our modern order – democratic process, the enforcement of law, economic transactions – depends on the principle of rational behaviour: the idea that individuals can act responsibly and be entrusted with freedoms. How close did we come to losing our grip on that?

Fear is disabling; it makes people feel helpless. But, perversely, it is also habit-forming