In defence of Boris’s ‘Rule of Six’

It wasn’t supposed to be like this, was it? Six months after the imposition of lockdown, we were meant to be securely on a gentle path back towards normality, not facing fresh nationwide restrictions. So it is no wonder that the Government’s new ‘Rule of Six’ has proved to be the straw that has broken an increasingly grumpy camel’s back on the right of politics.

Not only do the Government’s libertarian-minded detractors mock the arbitrary nature of the new restrictions, but they also take an increasingly hardline attitude towards the whole business of Covid. Toby Young, the general secretary of the Free Speech Union, has declared: ‘The risk of a ‘second wave’ is a steaming pile of bullshit’. Peter Hitchens, in my book always in the running for Greatest Living Englishman (Contrarian Class), rails against ‘this new wild curfew, unenforceable and more or less mad’. The estimable Julia Hartley-Brewer has decreed that the Rule of Six is ‘insane’ and ‘isn’t going to save any lives’.