Lurching wildly in a lockdown meltdown, Boris Johnson is imperilling lives by creating confusion when certainty is vital to halt the spread of a deadly virus.
Quite simply, it’s impossible for people to follow the rules when the majority across the UK are no longer sure what they are.
Unless the Conservative Government ends this chaos now, replacing mixed messages with clear guidance, there’s a terrifying danger that the coronavirus will spread rapidly again with Ministers forced to reimpose iron restrictions to save lives at the cost of livelihoods.
The crux of the problem is the PM’s preference for bluster over facts – his auto setting producing a robotic false optimism instead of hard truths.
When he misleadingly claimed life could be back to normal by Christmas, the echo was detected of First World War propagandists who, in 1914, similarly predicted the early end of a conflict which finished four years later with the battlefields of Europe soaked in blood.
Hope of a coherent, credible strategy emerging is slimmer than ever after Johnson again slammed on the brakes, halting the further easing of controls with only 24 hours notice that the “closed” signs must remain on the doors of beauticians, bowling alleys and other venues about to reopen.
The late U-turn recalled the sudden quarantine disarray for holidaymakers who, waiting to board flights, discovered they and the British tourists already in Spain must barricade themselves at home on return, despite virus rates in destinations such as Tenerife, 800 miles from the Spanish mainland, lower than in much of the UK.
Perhaps the biggest surprise in University College London’s latest Covid-19 Social Study wasn’t that fewer than half of people in England claimed to understand lockdown rules, but as many as 45 per cent thought they did.
That’s still worryingly way down on 90 per cent during earlier phases and lower than current figures of 61 per cent in Wales and 75 per cent in Scotland, where people find it easier to follow developments by the Labour administration in Cardiff and SNP regime in Edinburgh.
We appreciate in a Disunited Kingdom that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will pursue four tailored policies. We also recognise that local lockdowns are needed to suppress spikes.
What we cannot tolerate is the lack of credibility and coherence from a Prime Minister and his minions.
Blaming young people for crowding in pubs and beaches is knee-jerk blame-shifting when they, too, are now confused by the rules after widely obeying the earlier “Stay Home” message.
That was until official advice was devalued by the free pass awarded by Downing Street to adviser Dominic Cummings over his drives from London to County Durham and Barnard Castle.
So let the Government issue clear rules. Because lives are at stake here. Our lives.