The work from home brigade should be careful what they wish for

No more commuting. An end to irritating conversations with slightly dull colleagues. The boss can’t monitor how much time you spend on Facebook anymore, and you have plenty of time to bake sourdough bread/try out online pilates/read the whole of Proust (delete as applicable). A few of us might even be able to carry on earning a salary while spending much of the year in Provence or Tuscany. It is perhaps no great surprise that the British have taken to working from home so enthusiastically. After all, what’s not to like? Well, perhaps this: while it may be great for now, many staffers may soon find that they aren’t employees anymore, simply expendable gig workers – and that isn’t quite so much fun.

As the Covid-19 crisis gradually eases, it is proving hard to get the British back to work. A survey this week showed a third of young people expected to work from home more or less forever, while another earlier this week showed we were more reluctant to go back to our desks than any country in Europe.