Fraser Nelson has narrated this article for you to listen to.
Who would have thought, this time last year, that the British government would be planning to detain British nationals at the airport and keep them under guard in a hotel room for a ten-day quarantine? It’s quite a departure for a country whose values have always been defined by the defence of liberty. But we’re living in exceptional times, with the Covid death count at more than 100,000 — a bigger hit, as a proportion of population, than almost anywhere else in the world. This requires deep reflection about the mistakes made and the changes needed.
When the sick are still dying — at a rate of more than 1,000 a day — it’s hard to have a calm political discussion about what went wrong and how to get it right now. But the overall issue is simple: pursuing liberty in the short term may lead to lockdown, suppression and more death.
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