Not freedom day, but a day of destiny — for politicians and the people | thearticle

It doesn’t feel like Freedom Day — it’s too doom-laden for that. As our reluctantly isolating Prime Minister pleads with us to be cautious, while simultaneously launching the nation into the

unknown, he has the support of just 31 per cent of the public. A YouGov poll found that 55 per cent of voters are against reopening at this point. Boris Johnson’s personal U-turn over the

weekend — when he “briefly considered” avoiding isolation by joining a pilot scheme, only to run up against accusations of hypocrisy — may foreshadow a much bigger reversal of policy further

down the road. At each new twist of the serpentine path out of the pandemic, we seem to be more lost in the labyrinth than ever. New cases are heading towards 100,000 a day and parts of the

economy are struggling because so many workers are isolating. Scientists sound warnings that vaccination has weakened but not severed the link between infection and hospitalisation. The

mixed messaging has sown so much confusion that the same YouGov poll suggests that if the NHS proves unable to cope with a new wave of serious cases, voters will blame the Government rather

than the public. No wonder that many people question whether this is the right moment to hold a bonfire of rules intended to restrict spread of Covid and protect the vulnerable. The Labour

leader, Sir Keir Starmer, likens the policy to reckless driving: “The Prime Minister is essentially putting the whole nation into a car, pressing the accelerator and taking the seatbelt

off.” It’s an arresting image, though, to be fair to Boris Johnson, he has in effect been exhorting us to go on wearing our seatbelts for weeks now. His problem is that people take less

notice of what politicians say than what they do — and he was caught out. It is true that there is still no good answer to the question posed by Boris Johnson a fortnight ago, when he

announced that the Government would go ahead with the reopening: “If not now, when?” The summer holiday period is by common consent the most auspicious time to ease restrictions. Waiting

until the autumn or winter would risk filling up hospital beds with Covid patients at the same time as other seasonal epidemics, especially flu. And allowing the restrictions to last into

next year carries with it the prospect of institutionalising them. Do we want a permanent state of emergency? Pandemics differ from other natural disasters mainly in that the former can last

years, while most other catastrophes are at least short-lived. But the political fallout tends to be similar. Germany and other parts of Europe have just been devastated by floods of

biblical proportions. The shockingly high death toll has been attributed to a failure to warn communities despite timely warnings from meteorologists. Chancellor Merkel, President Steinmeier

and other dignitaries have been visiting the afflicted areas to show solidarity with the victims. At such times, public opinion is exceptionally sensitive to any failure of tact or

sensibility. One remembers how President George W Bush was never forgiven for flying over the flooded city of New Orleans at a safe distance. Donald Trump’s eagerness, on a visit last year

to a burning California, to blame forest fires on poor state management rather than climate change did not go down well either. In Germany the man who hopes to succeed Angela Merkel as

Chancellor in September, Armin Laschet, has just committed the cardinal sin of treating the flood victims with callous disrespect. On a visit to Erfstadt, a stricken Rhineland town near

Cologne, Laschet was caught on camera laughing and joking with his entourage in the background during a solemn speech by President Steinmeier. Despite tweeting an abject apology, Laschet has

been exposed as out of touch with voters in his own back yard. Besides his role as party leader and Chancellor candidate of the ruling Christian Democrats, Laschet is also the prime

minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, the region worst hit by the floods. At Erfstadt, the visiting President was thus his guest. Like others, Germans are sensitive to conduct unbecoming of a

statesman, especially at a time of national mourning. Laschet failed this test lamentably. Has Boris Johnson committed a comparable blunder by appearing to exempt himself and his colleague

Rishi Sunak from isolation, while expecting the rest of us to abide by the rules? He may have been saved by his swift about turn, but the impression had already been given by the now

unmentionable Matt Hancock that it was one rule for them, another for us. Such hypocrisies may seem trivial to politicians, but they register with the public. Nothing did Boris’s popularity

more good than the drama of contracting the coronavirus at the height of the first wave, becoming gravely ill and being nursed back to health like everyone else in an NHS hospital.  As a

classicist, he would know that King Philip of Macedon had a slave who woke him every day with the words: “Remember, Philip, you must die.” Philip’s practice was not adopted by his son,

Alexander the Great, who conquered the world, only to die suddenly at the height of his fame. The Prime Minister’s first name, by which his family knows him, is Alexander. (Boris is only one

of his middle names.) Perhaps the Prime Minister could do with an extra-special adviser whose job would be to remind him regularly of his brush with death. Let us pray that today, July 19,

this day of destiny, does not prove to be a _dies irae, _a day of judgement, not only for Boris Johnson but for the rest of our sorely tested nation. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the

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