The next few months will make or break the Johnson government

Editorial: Lessons from what went wrong in the spring have not been learnt

The PM’s approval ratings have been steadily sliding (Getty)

Even the most loyal of government supporters would have to concede that the great escape from lockdown isn’t going as well as hoped. Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester and hitherto mostly supportive of ministers’ plans in his city, has complained about the current confused messaging and failings in the test and trace regime that are actually “hampering” efforts to bring the coronavirus under control.

More and more local public health officers are considering going it alone. Millions of items of personal protective equipment have been found useless for frontline doctors and nurses. The travel quarantine rules are ill-conceived; the public less willing to comply with the guidance on holidays and social distancing. Lessons from what went wrong in the spring have not been learnt.

No surprise, therefore, that cases are spiking. The roll call of local lockdowns (partial or complete) is growing almost by the day. Ministers seem to be losing their game of whack-a-mole. Aberdeen and, soon, Preston, are joining Leicester, Luton, Blackburn with Darwen, Greater Manchester, East Lancashire, Bradford and other parts of Yorkshire. That, in turn, reflects the general pattern of the gently rising number of new covid cases, especially in England.