Boris’s latest lockdown rules are more baffling than ever

When Boris Johnson rolled back the legal restrictions over summer as Britain emerged from the first lockdown, he was clear that enough was enough:

‘Neither the police themselves, nor the public that they serve, want virtually every aspect of our behaviour to be the subject of the criminal law…After a long period of asking…the British public, to follow very strict and complex rules to bring coronavirus under control…we will be asking [people] to follow guidance on limiting their social contact, rather than forcing them to do so through legislation’.

Alas (as Boris Johnson keeps saying), trust in people doing the right thing voluntarily, rather than under legal obligation, turned out to be short-lived. 

Pressure from enforcement agencies played a part. The rule of six? When it was introduced in September, the Home Office said it ‘simplifies and strengthens the rules on social gatherings, making them easier to understand and easier for the police to enforce’. The