Coronavirus fatigue is near – the public may eventually rebel against government restrictions
One consequence of Donald Trump contracting coronavirus might turn out well – a reduction in the coronavirus infection rate. I feel no great sense of schadenfreude about the president’s condition, by the way, because it is an appalling disease and, as the saying goes, you’d not wish it on your worst enemy. That includes Trump.
Yet there is a huge and beneficent irony that attaches to the blanket coverage since the news broke: More people will wear masks, practise social distancing, work from home, wash their hands and generally be more vigilant and realistic about this virus than they might otherwise be. The conspiracy theorists may even relax some of their unhelpful claims that Covid-19 is a just a hoax or something invented by Bill Gates/the Chinese/the Russians/lizard people. Having said that, though, the number of people suggesting – double irony – that Trump is now hoaxing his own diagnosis of a disease he once called a political hoax suggests that sanity is not about to break out across social media.
In any case, I bet quite a few of us have been reminding ourselves about going shopping or taking a train ride. We are reminded of the truly dangerous and insidious nature of this hidden enemy, and how it will attack anyone.
Yet the effect of this dramatic development may not be permanent. The shock will wear off, as it eventually did when Boris Johnson fell ill in the spring. It’s been six months now since the first national lockdown and we may well be heading for a second national exercise in time for Christmas. Even if there is no national lockdown, the various combined local lockdowns already constitute a considerable partial national lockdown, so that distinction is growing rather academic.
London is on the watch list ... millions of businesses are deprived of their trade, millions will lose their jobs and the liberties of millions are being withdrawn without so much as a parliamentary vote. We may well be saving millions of lives too, but the balance of argument and sentiment is inevitably shifting. The likes of Dominic Cummings and Margaret Ferrier haven’t done anything to strengthen public confidence in our national leaders.
Even in the summer, there were signs of patience wearing thin. Then came the Tory MPs, narrowly prevented from launching a rebellion over the emergency powers. This week we have the first evidence of local resistance edging towards defiant rejection.
Andy Burnham, mayor of Manchester and enjoying his political revival, went about as far as he could when he advised ministers to return-think the 10pm pub curfew. The mayor of Middlesbrough, Andy Preston, went further in opposing the new restrictions in his town: “I don’t accept the statement at all, I don’t accept the measures, we need to talk to government, they need to understand our expertise to get things done and preserve jobs and wellbeing”. In Leicester, which hardly came out of the first lockdown, the mayor, Peter Soulsby has cavilled at the extension of rules in his city and made similar complaints about lack of local consultation – a common refrain among municipal leaders.
In an age of populism, such shifts in opinion matter.
They will become even more important if people start to wilfully ignore fresh regulations because they’re bored with them, or they’re simply impractical, such as telling students not to go out. Like all laws, they can only be upheld and policed by consent, and, as we saw during civil disturbances earlier this year and in the (very different) riots in 2011, if a population decides to break the law there’s not much the authorities can do to restrain them. (In that context talk about military involvement, even just “backfilling”, and a heavier police presence on the streets is even more worrying).
What happens in the weeks ahead if the population of a great conurbation decides to follow the lead of a mayor and collectively defy the rules? What if the publicans and their customers all stay open until 11 or 12? Imagine, if you can, 10pm closing on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve. What if the council refuses to enforce rules, or advises the police to turn a blind eye? Does Priti Patel round them all up and send them to Ascension Island?
Maybe that’s a bit fanciful, though, I suspect there are elements of such light disobedience already establishing themselves among what Boris Johnson calls “freedom living people”.
More realistic is a gradual decline in observance of social distancing, mask-wearing and meeting indoors, coupled with an ever more determined parliamentary assault on the rules as the weeks grind on, with the locally locked down areas the first to rebel.
President Trump’s illness gives us all pause for thought, but the popular mood is growing tired, and it is being felt and reflected in the Commons. The Tory rebels and opposition parties could easily throw the existing emergency powers out; but what would they put in their place? Ministers and their scientific advisers must be terrified about what the MPs might do under pressure of increasingly hostile and angry public opinion. As with Brexit, and as a result of the 2016 referendum, sovereignty and power has moved from parliament to people, to the street. We have a culture of populism, whether we like it or not, and it does not mix well with science.
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