The Covid winter is coming for Boris Johnson

When we went into Springtime national lockdown only eight months ago — it seems more like ancient history now — we were pretty much a country united. Fearful. Resigned perhaps. But surprisingly often excited and rather cheerful, determined to keep calm and carry on.

Not any more. Although polling shows that a significant majority of people claim they would accept even more draconian measures to combat Covid, be careful. People often tell professional pollsters what they think they would like to hear. Even anonymously, we virtue signal. Thus we say we would happily pay more in tax to help the NHS, the old or those who live in poverty in the developing world. Then we usually vote for the party that offers lower, not higher, rates of tax.

The truth is that the four “nations” of the once United Kingdom are increasingly setting themselves on different paths. So far their rows are about how best to defeat the virus and they are often ridiculous. The idea that Wales would forbid English people from high risk areas entering their territory is obvious nonsense. Would the non-existent Welsh armed forces be deployed at thousands of road blocks to force would-be arrivals from England to show their non-existent ID cards?

Even so, serious folk are speculating that the Covid crisis could be the crucial next step on the road to the eventual break-up of the Union. More immediately, whatever deal is reached with Manchester, the north and south of England are now positioned against each other. Boris’s stated desire to “bridge the gap”, to level things up in England, seems more unreal by the day.

Then there is the age gap. Boozy youngsters and party-going students face off against the sullen, “shielded” old. And although we still admire those genuinely amazing people on the front line of the NHS, from cleaners to consultants, there is increasing cynicism about the overpaid administrators and experts who preside over a broader, creaking service which can’t even get test and trace up and running properly. Finally, the scientists who produce “the science” to which our Government pays homage, are now openly divided. In reality there is no single science. So opposition to current policies is no longer confined to the fruitcakes and flat-earthers.

Somehow I doubt we will see the return of the weekly virtue signalling, hand clapping fest, led by Boris and Carrie on the door step of Number Ten. The revival of the Blitz Spirit which so many commentators identified last time round has long gone.

I spent last weekend, the first under London’s Tier Two restrictions, alone and shielded, on the phone and the computer, polling the opinions of a few friends and my extended family on the new patchwork quilt of dos and don’ts. I know that what follows is impressionistic and not demographically or statistically gold standard. But this is what I have found. I should add that we are law abiding, university-educated, middle-class, middle-aged, types, not given to hysteria or paranoia. Even so, we have very different world views. Some of us are Remainers, and several are unrepentant Brexiteers. Some voted for Johnson at the general election to keep Corbyn out. Others voted Corbyn to keep Johnson out. Some are climate change believers or eco-warriors. A few are not. Some support the BLM movement. Others, including me, regard many BLM groupies as, at best, dangerously misguided.

We are just as divided on the government policy needed to fight the virus, as we are on the above issues. Some say we need an indefinite national lockdown, or at least a short “sharp circuit” breaker, of the sort recently imposed in Wales. Others say that the current hodge podge of rules and regulations is a gross over-reaction. Several insist that saving one life is worth it, whatever the cost to the economy. Others say this is noble, idealistic nonsense that will devastate the nation. And an economy in ruins will mean a decade or more of poverty, joblessness and ever declining standards of health care. That will mean condemning many thousands to death, and millions more to a life time of misery. One friend — an otherwise sane professional person — has actually joined the conspiracy theorists.

To my surprise, many of us say that they will not automatically obey the new rules, come what may. They will use what Johnson called earlier this year, “good British common sense”. To be brutal, they are saying they are prepared to break the law and to heck with the consequences. There is a lot of bravado and bitterness in such talk. But when “our sort of people”, calm and law abiding, become scofflaws, Ministers would be well advised to take notice.

There is however one single, very important, thing on which all my unrepresentative sample agree. But there is, sadly, nought for your comfort, Mr Prime Minister, in their unanimity. They all agree — with me — that your current package of measures simply will not do the job. Even those who say they will obey them at all times, mostly add they will do so out of a sense of duty or cowardice, rather than because they have the slightest confidence in them.

The winter of our discontent is surely coming.