Britain’s corona cops are both absurd and terrifying

So we’re now three weeks into our coronavirus lockdown and we’ve had a glimpse of what a very British police state might look like. The picture that has emerged is one as comical as it is terrifying.

From the off, it seemed many police officers had not bothered to read or even tried to get the gist of the new laws and regulations they were supposed to be enforcing, under both the Coronavirus Act and the Health Protection Regulations – later brought in to empower police to enforce the lockdown.

Instead, police across the country have confused government guidance with actual law. People buying so-called ‘non-essential items’ seems to be a particular obsession. Gloucestershire police have been carrying out checks at retail parks and issuing lists of apparently forbidden purchases, including Easter eggs, scratch cards and bamboo fencing. Meanwhile, the Twitter account for Cambridge police expressed one officer’s pleasure in patrolling a Tesco and finding the ‘non-essential aisles’ empty.