Lockdown turned Britain into a nation of neurotics who still cling to their homes

Something very strange has happened to the British national mood which scarcely anybody is attempting to explain, perhaps because it is so disturbing and mysterious as to be inexplicable. It consists of more than the headline figure which has received a fair (but not enormous) amount of coverage, that one fifth of the workingage population is “economically inactive” – which is to say not just unemployed but not seeking employment.

The economic consequences of this fact are obvious, of course. Not only is that 20 per cent failing to make any contribution to the country’s productivity or to the tax revenue that their employment would produce, but quite a large proportion of them are categorised as “long-term sick” and so are being supported by the state. Some of their claims might seem tenuous – exploiting what the tabloids like to call the “scroungers’ charter” of welfare – but a good many are clearly legitimate. They are genuine victims of the delays in treatment of painful conditions and missed diagnoses of serious illness during the pandemic.

But may I suggest that even many of the more dubious, or less objectively verifiable, chronically ill are not simply faking it? That the complaints of “long Covid”, whose chief symptoms are overwhelming fatigue and lassitude, or of incapacitating anxiety which makes any venture outside of home unbearable, are genuine cases?

Extreme fatigue and crippling anxiety are well known symptoms of profound psychological disturbance. Their physical manifestations may be labelled “psychosomatic” but that is not tantamount to saying that they are imaginary or that they can be consciously controlled. The word “psychosomatic” simply means that a condition of the mind is having an effect on the body – and the effect is perceptibly real.

In fact, what we might be witnessing is an epidemic of neurosis – sometimes perhaps bordering on psychosis – whose symptoms may be diffuse but which all have the same effect: a reluctance to leave home that is so persistent and severe as to constitute a kind of agoraphobia.

And further, is it possible that, as well as those who openly admit to such fear, there is a category of what we could call quiet phobics: people who have decided to work less or not at all – perhaps taking early retirement – even if that means being poorer, because they have discovered that they “prefer staying at home”?

I can understand the arguments for this: the stress and expense of commuting, an escape from office politics and the demands of employers. And yet…isn’t there something a bit odd about this sudden overturning of what used to be the normal expectation of adult life, especially among the professional classes whose upbringing and education had been geared to providing a fulfilling career? How is it that – apparently in a spontaneous instant – such a large number of grown-up, responsible people should have decided to chuck it all in and withdraw from the primary arena of social interaction that work represents?

Many of those who have made this decision would argue that they are not cutting themselves off from the world at large: that the new era of digital communication makes it possible for them to participate in conversations and dialogue with a greater range of contacts – many of whom are further afield than their old circle, which was limited by physical proximity. If anything, they would claim, their horizons have enlarged rather than narrowed.

But is this really true? Do social media, or email or even live on-screen meetings actually replace the bodily presence and spontaneity of human association? Or is it a simulacrum of social life with most of the uncomfortable, unpredictable, possibly volatile bits taken out? Digital communications can be shut down (blocked) temporarily or permanently.

They can be ignored or terminated without explanation. They are a perfect refuge for anyone who is finding actual human contact too stressful.

If I am right about this, then the question that urgently needs answering is, why has human contact – which should be the most normalising aspect of life – become so alarming? This, on purely anecdotal evidence, extends beyond the reluctance to go to work. I have lost count of the number of people who have told me that they themselves, or people close to them, have become uncharacteristically reluctant to go out.

Even routine journeys which used to be enjoyable – shopping expeditions, meeting up with friends, visits to cultural venues – are now somehow too troublesome or exhausting to contemplate. This has nothing much to do with the idea of health risk: Covid is gone from the public consciousness now. What remains is an amorphous dread which seems to turn an everyday event into an expedition that must be carefully planned and scheduled if it cannot be avoided.

Some of the trend to non-working life was obviously generated by government with its extraordinary, unprecedented programme of paying people to stay at home, and the aversion to social contact became embedded under the hideous lockdown conditions. But it is important to know why this has become such a notable feature of British life when it does not appear to have taken hold in other countries which imposed similar pandemic restrictions and have since returned to normal.

Again I must revert to anecdotal accounts which ring true to me. In many countries which have authoritarian political traditions, such rules were resented and frequently (often openly) flouted. But in the UK the government was aware of the libertarian inclinations of its population, and so presented lockdown as the moral responsibility of every individual. Through a quite insidious and carefully orchestrated campaign of fear and potential guilt, it made people internalise the need for their own imprisonment.

Now even when the jail door has been opened, an awful lot of people, having grown accustomed to their confinement, don’t want to leave. We should have seen this coming.

Could it be that one of the causes of this growing reluctance to work is a persistent, amorphous feeling of dread?

With an insidious campaign of fear, the government made people internalise the need for their imprisonment