Europe still hasn’t learned from its lockdown debacles

In his fascinating interview in the current issue of The Spectator, Rishi Sunak revealed the black hole at the centre of the British government’s 2020 lockdown policies. The former Chancellor claims that two crucial things were lacking at the time of the lockdowns – political candour and a ‘grown up conversation’ between Boris Johnson’s government and the quarantined population. Two and a half years later, though, there’s been no such conversation, especially in the European countries where the legality of lockdowns has already been questioned.

France was one of the first countries to challenge hastily-enacted measures that criminalised normal behaviour. In May 2020, lawyers appearing in the country’s highest court of appeal focused on two key issues – whether the governmental decrees ordering quarantine were legal, as decrees didn’t usually have the power to alter criminal law; and whether regulations with serious penalties for non-compliance (i.e. fines or prison sentences) could be based on imprecise definitions (i.e.