Letters: Why we obeyed lockdown

Why we allowed it

Sir: In her article ‘Why didn’t more people resist lockdown?’ (3 September), Lionel Shriver partially answers her own question. Priti Patel told us it was our public duty to shop our neighbours if they had three friends to tea, and our previously invisible police force started to patrol parks and beaches with unprecedented vigour, with a threat of £1,000 fines for malfeasance. There was no eagerness, but the public were glued to the nightly broadcasts from No. 10, where the PM told us we would be little better than murderers if we didn’t obey the diktats.

The fear all this created is still evident as I walk round Sainsbury’s every week and see masked shoppers disinfecting their trollies as if their life depended on it.

Martin Henry

Good Easter, Essex

Violating our freedom

Sir: Lee Cain defends the dictatorship of which he was part (as No. 10’s director of communications) by asking us if we believe that without lockdown, ‘people would have voluntarily stayed at home and avoided social contacts, as in Sweden, so restrictions were not needed’? (Letters, 3 September). Yes, we do. And it says something about what is wrong with Britain that this violation of our freedom is defended by a ‘director of communications’, not by a minister.

Michael Upton

Worst-case scenarios

Sir: In his Diary (3 September), Michael Gove eulogises about the importance of ‘worst-case scenarios’ being brought to the prime minister. Isn’t it the case though that ‘worst-case scenarios’ are what led the UK government to make two of its most serious policy mistakes? Namely, enforcing repeated lockdowns and signing up to the Northern Ireland Protocol. As such, any PM faced with a policy recommendation based on a ‘worst-case scenario’ would be well advised to do precisely the opposite.