What is Chris Whitty up to?

There was a period during the pandemic in 2020 when the pubs were open but you could only go to one if you sat on your own and had a meal. You were allowed to buy an alcoholic drink but once you had finished your meal you could not buy another one. There was also a 10 p.m. curfew when the pub had to close and everyone had to go straight home.

Whether this did much to stop the spread of Covid is debatable (there were reports of a lot of house parties starting just after 10 p.m.), but it allowed the ‘public health’ establishment to turn pubs into what it thought they should always have been: functional, sterile restaurants where fun is discouraged if not outright illegal. At the top of that establishment sits the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Chris Whitty. Since the pandemic, Whitty has been busy lobbying successive prime ministers for a series of fanatical nanny state measures.