Steven Barrett

Don’t blame Boris for lockdown rule confusion

Getty images

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 first change seemed to cause less of a fuss. When the PM addressed the nation on Sunday, we were all using version two and nothing changed in law until three days later. All he did was highlight to workers that for 45 days they had had the power to go to work if they could not work from home.

So why was it that we had all these powers to leave our houses from 26 March to 13 May but didn’t use them? The answer is part of justice and shows the limits of mere law. We should all take a moment to be mildly proud of ourselves here. Most of us went well beyond what the law required because we cared and wanted to save lives.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in