Mixed messages strengthen suspicions that coronavirus policy is being driven by politics

Some believe the increasingly confusing guidelines are a deliberate plot to trick the public into going back to life as normal for the sake of the economy, writes Andrew Woodcock

A 14-day quarantine period has been reimposed for visitors coming from Spain (AFP/Getty)

Once it was all so straightforward. “Stay home, save lives” was a message anyone could understand and most – apparently more than the government was expecting – complied with.

But as the UK withdrew from lockdown, it was bound to get more complicated. And this was the week when the messages got so mixed that frankly it takes a furrowed brow and a concentrated period of textual analysis before anyone can be sure exactly what they are supposed to be doing.

Just days before we are told we should be going back to our workplaces, chilling warnings emerge from Boris Johnson and his ministers about a second wave of infections sweeping our way.

Weeks after being told that it is at last safe to go on holiday abroad, we see quarantine reimposed on visitors to Spain – including islands with a far lower rate of coronavirus than the UK – and threatened for other slightly less probable destinations, like Luxembourg.

And now the period of self-isolation for people with a suspicious cough is being extended from seven to 10 days, just as everyone is getting used to going back to the shops and pubs.

The confusing signals reinforce the impression that Johnson’s administration has struggled to get its public messaging right all through the crisis, whether breezily encouraging people to carry on shaking hands early on in the outbreak, chopping and changing instructions on masks and social distancing, or scaring people so much about the dangers of social contact that many are reluctant even now to emerge from their bubbles.

The suspicion has been allowed to develop that advice is sometimes driven as much by political aims as by the science.

Some believe the complexity of the new post-lockdown guidance is designed precisely to make people feel they can forget the rules and go back to the kind of normal life that will drive economic recovery.

Others suspect that Mr Johnson’s warnings of a wave of infections from overseas is intended to spread the idea that the uptick of UK cases expected by most scientists in the autumn can be blamed on “abroad” – or better still “Europe”.

Whatever the confusion and whatever the intent, I suspect what the government will finally be judged on is the numbers. And with the UK recording the highest per-capita Covid-19 fatalities among the world’s worst affected states, and England suffering more excess deaths than any other country in Europe, there is no confusion about the message sent by the data.

Yours,

Andrew Woodcock

Political Editor