Only Boris can end the lockdown

Events make a mockery of predictions. And events of recent days have borne that truth out most starkly. Nobody could have predicted where our nation stands today. We have gone from being a supposedly divided country into one united in response to an unprecedented crisis. The news that the Prime Minister has been admitted to intensive care has united the country in shock — and in hope for his recovery.

From the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, Boris Johnson led in the way he always has. He threw himself into efforts to counter the virus. He dispensed optimism and hope where there was understandable fear. He successfully persuaded the British people not just to volunteer in their hundreds of thousands to help the NHS but to agree to a set of lockdown policies which would have seemed unimaginable just weeks ago.

It’s not that Britain is handling the crisis very differently to any western country. We’re in an extraordinary situation where the tool of lockdown is being used by countries of vastly different cultures and political systems. But many leaders have reached for extra powers with a little too much relish. For his part, the Prime Minister has loathed every stage of the lockdown. This is perhaps why it has won such public support: almost no one seriously thinks he will take this a single step further than is needed, or that he will keep these procedures in place for a day longer than is necessary.

Had the last general election worked out differently, the combination of Corbynism and the current crisis would have been deeply dangerous. The state would have grabbed power over large sections of the economy, but there would have been no guarantee about any power being handed back.