The argument around UK Coronavirus policy looks like it’s over before it even got started. The “hawks” in the Conservative Party might have preferred a more rapid lifting of restrictions, but no-one serious on the Left or Right is contesting the principle of a cautious and phased approach to releasing the lockdown.
The new, ongoing serology study by the ONS and Oxford University — the first phase of which is released tomorrow — will settle the argument even more definitively. It is expected to show that under 10% of the UK population have had Covid-19: still a lot of people, but not enough to be confident about much of an immunity effect. Hopes of widespread symptomless infections and 50% infection rates will be dashed. Ongoing suppression is the plan — Ferguson 1, Giesecke 0.
Meanwhile all the political pressure on the Prime Minister is pushing him towards a slower and more cautious path towards lifting the lockdown. Even the superlatively tentative first steps he took on Sunday, wading through ifs and buts, were leapt on by the SNP and trade unions as proof of a reckless Tory Party pushing workers into the workplace before it was safe.
As for the voters, polls show that the British public has fully signed up to lockdown life. A survey released at the weekend showed that 73% of Brits think protecting lives should take precedence over the economy, compared to just 49% of Germans and 44% of Swedes. Polling since Sunday‘s announcement suggests that voters are split almost exactly evenly on whether or not even those tiny relaxations were too much, too soon. On that evidence, it looks like the Prime Minister went about as far as he could go.
And yet, despite all this, in time we may find ourselves tacking back to something closer to the Swedish model anyway. Here’s how.
First, public opinion will change, and despite their current popularity, attitudes to the restrictions will eventually sour. While 82% of voters say they could put up with lockdown-style measures until the beginning of June, that drops to 69% for the beginning of July and 44% for the beginning of August. Data from YouGov shows that support for individual lockdown measures has already been drifting down from its peak at the end of March.
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