Is it the right time to be ending Covid restrictions? Nobody knows – least of all Boris Johnson

He may be doing the right thing. He may be engaging in life endangering opportunism. But no one can know for sure, because there is not a soul left in the country who truly believes a word he says

Prime Minister Boris Johnson rubbing his hair to get ready for a interview during the Munich Security Conference in Germany where he is meeting with world leaders to discuss tensions in eastern Europe. Picture date: Saturday February 19, 2022. (PA Wire)

It is unfortunate that Boris Johnson’s plan to declare the end of Covid should have coincided with Her Majesty The Queen, aged 95, testing positive for the disease.

Is Johnson declaring a premature end to this deadly pandemic to appease his unhinged backbenchers, a great number of whom would, given the choice, have never actually declared the beginning of it?

Is his decision to end restrictions a month early a desperate ploy to find a way through to the end of the Downing Street party saga, without it proving terminal to him?

Or is it, actually, the right time to be doing it? After all, it’s not that long ago that World Health Organisation said the UK could be the first major country to come out the other side of Covid-19, thanks to its rather curious double whammy of massive waves of infection, very large amounts of very premature death, and a very well-organised vaccine programme.

And the answer is, I don’t know. And you don’t know either. No one does. And therein lies, yet again, the problem. He may be doing the right thing. He may be engaging in life endangering opportunism. But no one can know for sure, not even Nadine Dorries, because there is not a soul left in the country who truly believes a word he says.

It is almost two years since the start of the pandemic. In that time, Johnson has ignored his scientific advisors, many times, leading directly to tens of thousands of preventable deaths. He has been publicly disowned by Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, while they stood next to him at press conference lecterns.

We have a prime minister who can stand up in the House of Commons, as he did on Monday afternoon, and tell people that it’s time to go about their lives as normal, that no longer need to fear a disease that has killed more than 150,000 people, which is still rampant throughout the country, and which still has the capacity to mutate into a more harmful form.

And as a direct consequence of his very well documented shamelessness, it is impossible – entirely impossible – to know whose interests he serves.

Earlier in the day, a cabinet meeting to sign off on the end of Covid restrictions ended as soon as it began, in a row over whether free testing should continue. The health secretary thinks it should. The chancellor didn’t want to pay for it. A compromise was found.

The pandemic was barely weeks old when the director general of the World Health Organisation, Tedros Ghebreyesus, issued a very clear, three-word instruction to the world. It was “test, test, test.” The UK’s response was to instruct people with symptoms to self-isolate and *not* to get a test. Chris Whitty has described that decision as his “biggest regret” of the pandemic.

Mass testing is the only way to keep track of a virus that is certainly going to spread even faster, if people with Covid no longer have to self-isolate. We have decided, once again, to do things differently.

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Maybe they’re right. Maybe they’re wrong. Maybe, by now, they don’t really know any more than the rest of us.

Matt Hancock, remember him, chirped up halfway through Johnson’s commons statement to announce that the way ahead for Covid was for people to take “personal responsibility.” He said these words having had to resign for an illegal grope in his office. And he said them to a prime minister who is being investigated by police for breaking lockdown rules inside 10 Downing Street, along with as many as 90 staff who work there.

It’s all auto-satirical as always. But in a way, Matt Hancock’s right. People will have to take personal responsibility. The trouble is that everyone took the first stage of their own personal responsibility a long time ago, and that’s to never, ever, ever trust the government for a second. That makes things rather more difficult, and for that, they are 100 per cent to blame.