Britain’s vaccine success was supposed to lead to freedom. What happened?

In November, when cases were surging and a second lockdown was under way, Boris Johnson made a big promise: things might look bleak, he said, but the ‘scientific cavalry’ would arrive. It duly did, with a vaccination programme that became the envy of Europe. The mood of the country lifted. Today, Britain is still on course to become the first country in Europe to vaccinate its way out of the pandemic — and lockdown. The economy can reopen in time for summer: truly a great escape.

Science achieved the seemingly impossible. Produced in record time, Covid vaccines are proving more effective than most predicted. In Britain, cases and deaths have fallen by 95 per cent since the latest peak, a stunning descent. British immunity levels have surged: roughly half of Brits are estimated to have antibodies to Covid, according to the Office for National Statistics. In December, it was just 13 per cent. Economists predicted the vaccine factor would give Britain a competitive edge in its economic bounce back — but in November no one would have been so bold as to imagine that the cavalry would arrive in such numbers, with such force, and to such effect.

So science has delivered. But politics has not. With each success, the official return to normality seems to slip further away. As the country headed into its third lockdown, the Prime Minister promised that the most vulnerable would be vaccinated by mid-February and Britain would be open by Easter weekend. The first part happened — the second did not. The ‘roadmap’ to freedom extended lockdown — in various forms — until 21 June. But the PM left the hardest decisions for later reviews. This week, we got the first teasers on the future of social distancing, international travel and ID cards. It appears we’ll have to live with yet more muddling Covid rules and regulations for longer.