If a day is a long time in politics, 36 hours is a lifetime with this government. On Tuesday morning, Dominic Raab told the BBC’s Today programme:
‘We don’t think Plan B is required. Why? Because of the success of the vaccine programme.’
It was a reasonable analysis and a sound conclusion. The UK has delivered an incredible 120 million Covid vaccines in the last year, including 21 million booster doses in the last few months. In South Africa, the epicentre of the Omicron outbreak, only 25 per cent of the population has been fully vaccinated and almost no one has had a booster shot. Whatever the situation in southern Africa – and it doesn’t look particularly perilous right now – the UK is better prepared for an Omicron surge than almost any other country in the world.
And yet at 6pm the following day, Boris Johnson was once again on television telling the public to brace themselves for more restrictions on their liberty.
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