On A-levels and quarantine, Boris Johnson has to work harder to take the country with him

Editorial: Asking hundreds of thousands of people to isolate for 14 days, at such short notice, requires a bit more than a shrug and a: ‘Well, you knew the risks when you went’

The prime minister is entering a dangerous phase. The clear cases of injustice suffered by individual students in the exams fiasco are undermining public confidence in his government’s basic competence. The imposition of quarantine on returning holidaymakers threatens a quieter but equally serious backlash.

Unless Gavin Williamson, the over-promoted education secretary, can set up an appeals procedure that resolves the worst cases within days, to allow students to secure university places this year, he will destroy any illusions that his government could run a whelk stall. It is astonishing that, with five months to prepare, Mr Williamson failed to make Ofqual publish its plans for assigning grades well in advance so that some of these problems could have been anticipated.

On quarantine, the danger to the government and to the country is less visible but no less important. Asking hundreds of thousands of people to isolate for 14 days, at such short notice, requires a bit more than a shrug and a: “Well, you knew the risks when you went.”

It may be that quarantining arrivals from France and the Netherlands is the right policy – or it may be that the marginal and theoretical benefit is not worth the costs. And it may be that when quarantine was imposed last month on travellers returning from Spain, a majority of the British public (51 per cent) told opinion pollsters that they supported the policy. But a lot of people (41 per cent) disagreed or thought more time should have been allowed.

For a policy that relies on good will to be effective, such a level of support is not enough. If Boris Johnson is convinced that quarantine is the right policy, then he should have spent the time since Spain was taken off the welcome-back list explaining to the British people why it was necessary, and beefing up the way the rules are enforced.

Because we seem poised on the brink of a creeping and silent revolt, and it may be that many people will be tempted to ignore the requirement to isolate themselves for 14 days. Enforcement is weak, with phone calls made at random to mobile phone numbers, asking people to confirm that they are at home. If three calls go unanswered, the police are expected to knock on the door, but no one seems to be collecting the figures on how many people have actually been fined for failing to quarantine.

This is a dangerous moment for Mr Johnson because if people suspect that others are ignoring the rules, they will feel under less pressure to abide by them. Once the confidence of the law-abiding core of British society is weakened, it is hard to win it back. And this will matter if the government has to ask us to do difficult and inconvenient things in future – if, for example, the virus really does start to fill up our hospitals again.

We have seen Mr Johnson make these mistakes time and again. His indulgence of Dominic Cummings, his chief adviser who was allowed to interpret the lockdown rules in his own idiosyncratic way; his simultaneous tightening and easing of restrictions; and the general appearance of making it up as he goes along: each of these stripped away a further modicum of trust in the government.

The Independent has suggested a policy of mass testing, on arrival at airports and at intervals thereafter, as a pragmatic alternative to quarantine. But if quarantine is the right policy, the prime minister and his ministers have to be out explaining it all the time, and they have to have credible mechanisms to enforce it. Otherwise the confidence of the public on which successful suppression of the virus depends will evaporate.