Boris should be praised for his reluctance to send in the police

There was an extraordinary moment in the government’s Covid-19 news briefing yesterday. Boris Johnson was asked: ‘Prime Minister, people aren’t acting responsibly, so when are you going to bring in the police?’

Boris was aghast. ‘Bring in the police?!’, he said, looking, as one would hope he would, horrified by the prospect of the UK becoming a police state that arrests people for going outside and strolling in parks. Guess which side in this telling Q&A got the most flak? Yep, not the journalist wondering out loud when cops are going to step in, but the PM who has an instinctive loathing of such an authoritarian prospect.

This is the world we live in now: one where wanting a police state makes you a better person than those who think this might be an excessive and unnecessary step.

The government’s news briefings have become startling affairs. Boris and his advisers offer sober but calm assessments of where we’re at right now and what must be done to slow the spread of Covid-19.