There has been much chatter about people being puzzled by the lockdown rules. Critics of Boris Johnson are partly right: the law is confusing. But this isn’t necessarily the Prime Minister’s fault. And nor should it come as a surprise. Why? Because the law can never give absolute clarity about what you should do. Only a totalitarian dictatorship could even try – and even then it would almost certainly fail.
Lockdown is not martial law. It is made up of many factors, only one of which is the law. The law spelling out what we can and can’t do under lockdown is The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020. It is a major advancement that we can all read it at all; not long ago, barristers could charge fees for just saying what was in a statute (because only they had the books).
While the backlash was loudest after Boris’s Sunday night address, it’s worth remembering that this update wasn’t the first amendment to the law, which has actually changed twice. The
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