Give liberty a nudge
After two years of Covid caution, a pie and a pint with my parents was a reminder of the joys of freedom.
“OH, it’s fine, just come in,” said the lady at the door of my parents’ care home, waving away my negative LFT – and I felt like kissing her.
The occasion was last week when, for a couple of days, I headed down to England to see my mum and dad. For the last ghastly year, the experience of going into their home has been not unlike preparing for a moonwalk. Full body PPE: tick. Confirmation of vaccination status: tick. Evidence of a PCR or LFT: tick. Only then were relatives permitted to leave the airlock chamber in reception and enter the holy sanctum of the residence itself for our allotted few moments with our loved ones. Worse were the truly awful “pods” where, during particularly restricted times, resident and visitor had to talk to each other separated by a Perspex screen. My dementia-ridden dad would stare at us numbly like a convicted felon before being led away by a carer. Dignified it wasn’t. Sometimes it felt better not going at all.
So when over half term – with the relaxation of rules already palpable in the Lancashire air – we were allowed inside with a smile, a welcome and barely a glance at the LFT test I had brought with me, and when we then given free rein to take my parents out for lunch and pie and a pint at the local pub, it felt like spring had come early. For families, we finally can give elderly parents a little back. For Care Home residents themselves, the physical and mental barrier between outside and inside can be lowered just a little, giving them a sense they are no longer forgotten. It is a relief too for the brilliant staff in our social care system, who have shouldered more than their fair share of trauma over the last two years. Freedom is truly wonderful.
All this came to mind as Boris Johnson and Nicola Sturgeon set out their contrasting proposals on Covid this week. In England, the legal requirement for self-isolation will end tomorrow and free testing will stop by the beginning of April. In Scotland, while vaccine passports and compulsory mask wearing will be scrapped, testing continues and Miss Sturgeon urges us to maintain vigilance. In truth, the specific differences between the two governments are less than meets the eye; there is nothing that takes place in my parents’ care home in England that couldn’t happen here. What’s striking, however, is the gap in tone and emphasis. For Mr Johnson, the lodestar is liberty; for Miss Sturgeon, it is caution. On this one, I believe Mr Johnson has it right. Because it is high time that liberty got a nudge.
We have all accepted that freedom has had to take a back seat these last two years. We have all bowed down in favour of “the science”. But that calculation has now palpably changed. With the incredible success of the vaccine and the introduction of new antiviral drugs there is no longer such clarity over what exactly the “the science” is really saying. As Sir Andrew Pollard of Oxford University, a government advisor on Covid, noted on Monday: “There isn’t a right or wrong answer to this (ending restrictions) because we don’t have a measure that helps us get there.” In short, Covid has taken its place as just one of many other issues flashing up on the government’s dashboard which has to be taken into account. Earlier this week, Mr Johnson found himself condemned by SNP politicians for doing that most heinous of things: making a “political decision” on the virus. Not a single public health expert was backing him up, insisted SNP MP Phillipa Whitford. This missed the point. In a world where the risks of Covid can now be weighed fairly against other considerations, and where “the science” is too murky to provide definite conclusions, then a political calculation is precisely what is now required.
For example, there is an extremely high risk just now that a cost-of-living crisis is about to smash into peoples’ quality of life. In communities across the country, families are pleading for extra financial support to see them through. Is spending £2 billion a month on testing kits a good way of spending taxpayers’ money when it might instead go towards help with heating the homes of hard up families?
Then there is the backlog in medical treatment which will take years to clear post-Covid. The continuing rules on self-isolation mean even more operations and procedures are being delayed, as doctors and nurses are forced to take time off. As Sir Andrew also noted earlier this week, “there will be surgery cancelled today that many be critical for people because of staff who are off work during that period.” Is that risk not to be considered too?
In these circumstances, Covid caution cannot continue to have a prior right to policy. Indeed, as Mr Johnson has also seen, the country needs to undergo a major correction against the entire Covid-weighted thinking that has come to dominate our political culture. This is not just a matter of examining the unintended consequences of Covid restrictions and rescinding legislation which has given government such control over our lives. As I’ve argued in these pages before, there is also a need to challenge the precautionary way of life that the pandemic has bred. We can see this culture in the politicians and public sector bosses who now act with one eye on the forthcoming public inquiry, rather than on the circumstances of the present. These days when they talk of “following the science”, I hear the unmistakable sound of a so-called leader avoiding making a decision. It’s also a culture which elevates politicians as public guardians and diminishes the role of personal responsibility. The pandemic has promoted the damaging message that it is for government to decide on our personal freedom and behaviour. This may have been essential two years ago, but it must be actively resisted now. As Mr Johnson noted correctly on Monday: “We do not need laws to compel people to be considerate to others. We can rely on our sense of responsibility towards one another.”
The contest between caution and liberty – between Miss Sturgeon and Mr Johnston’s approach - will likely have a few rounds to go yet. As both have acknowledged, a new variant is certain and it will likely be worse than Omicron. But leaders cannot live forever in anticipation of bad news nor second guess their decisions today based on how they might look tomorrow. And nor should they ever forget that the default position for a free society is to have that freedom as of right.
For me last week, that liberty was be able to walk into a care home, pick up my parents, and take them out for a chicken pie in a nearby pub. This is what freedom looks like. How precious it is.
ENDS
This article first appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail 23rd February 2022