Boris has already bungled the second lockdown

‘We could have got away with less if we had done it earlier.’ Those words to me from a scientific adviser to the government – about the lockdown of England the prime minister is planning to announce, probably on Monday – foreshadow a looming crisis of confidence in Boris Johnson’s stewardship of measures to tackle the Covid-19 crisis. Here is the chronology that is devastating for Johnson.

By taking tougher action earlier, our way of life and economic activity could have been maintained in a more normal way for longer

On 21 September, his advisers on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies recommended there should be a two-week circuit-breaking lockdown in England, to bear down on coronavirus infections that were rising but were still at a low level. The PM refused, misplacing his faith in a Test and Trace service that he created and which he wrongly hoped would allow him to identify local infection hotspots and bear down on them before they spread – even though Sage told him on the same date that Test and Trace at that juncture was not doing its job well enough.