‘It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…’ Or it certainly was until Omicron intervened. For the latest Covid variant has raised fears the government will be forced into a Groundhog Day style re-run of the awful events of last December, when Boris Johnson ‘cancelled Christmas’ less than a week before the big day. What followed was somewhere between Planes, Trains and Automobiles and the evacuation of Saigon as thousands of desperate Londoners stampeded through stations to get home before restrictions took effect.
Twelve months on and with most of Britain double or triple jabbed, there were hopes such scenes could be avoided this year. But with case rates soaring, the Cabinet are meeting this afternoon to discuss the latest data amid fears that the Covid curbs of December 2020 could be reintroduced in December 2021. The current mood music coming out of Whitehall is a far cry from, er, just last month, when upbeat optimists within the government were insisting all would be well.
For no-one was more enthused with Tiggerish enthusiasm than the optimist-in-chief Boris Johnson.
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