Will England’s lockdown end on 2 December? Even before this morning’s media round there was good reason to suspect it might not. The first national lockdown – we were originally told – would be for three weeks, with the explicit aim of building more capacity in the National Health Service. But the goalposts shifted and three weeks turned into more than three months: despite daily Covid deaths peaking in April, pubs and restaurants didn’t reopen until early July. Weeks later gyms and other leisure sectors followed, and public transport guidance changed to encourage employees back to their offices.
This morning, half a day after the Prime Minister laid out his four-week timeline for a second lockdown, comments from Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove and Sage advisor Professor Sir Jeremy Farrar have called it into question, both suggesting we could be in for a repeat of lockdown extensions.
First up on the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show, Professor Farrar, Sage committee member and Director of the Wellcome Trust, refused to rule out a longer lockdown, arguing that it would be better to extend the new lockdown up to Christmas to allow a relaxation of the rules then, rather than end lockdown on the proposed date and risk infections rising:
It’s hard to imagine the government lifting lockdown measures while hospitalisations are still on the rise
‘We don’t know what the situation is going to be like in the last week of November and the first week of December.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in