Annabel Denham

The cost of delaying ‘freedom day’

Photo by WPA Pool/Getty Images

When Boris Johnson announced that unlocking would be guided by ‘data not dates’ he handed detractors ample scope for derision and defiance. In the four months since, lockdown critics have rightly insisted that he uphold the slogan and accelerate a roadmap, designed to move at such a glacial speed, that it risked fraying the DNA of our economy and permanently crushing our joie de vivre. 

Why did we spend Easter isolated from loved ones? April in wintry beer gardens? Why did we roll out the vaccine at phenomenal pace only to keep restrictions in place as the number of Covid deaths hit single digits?

Contrary to expectation, however, that mantra was probably a good hill to die on. Denouncing Boris Johnson’s decision to rubber-stamp the roadmap delay and pencil in 19 July as our new ‘Freedom Day’ is awkward now that the top-line stats are so unnerving. 7,000 infections on consecutive days for the first time since late February. A strain so transmissible that it now makes up 91 per cent of Coronavirus cases in the UK. An R rate among the highest in Europe.

But if the Prime Minister is as fixated on data as he professes, where are the cost-benefit analyses or the impact assessments? An estimated eight in ten of us now have antibodies. It’s also estimated there will be a two per cent hit to GDP from this four-week postponement. 

Where are the cost-benefit analyses or the impact assessments?

What of the 25,000 licensed venues that have still not reopened and cannot do so until the government gets rid of the rule of six? We all need a better sense of the trade-offs, not least the 25 per cent of staff in arts and entertainment still on furlough.


But numbers in isolation are virtually meaningless.

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