Too much good news could spell trouble for Boris

Tory MP’s reaction to the lockdown easing plan is a mixed bag. In general, they would have preferred a quicker timetable. But, as I say in the magazine this week, there is also relief that Johnson has explicitly ruled out going for a zero-Covid strategy and that there is an end date for all restrictions. A big fear on the Tory benches was that unless a date was set, restrictions could drag on for years in the way that rationing did after the second world war. 

One senior Conservative backbencher from the more libertarian wing of the party observes that the plan ‘could have been worse’. What he and other similarly minded Tory MPs would like is for the government to say it will move faster if the data continues to bring good news. ‘You say you are being driven by the data not dates, then you put dates in the document and say you won’t change them if the data changes,’ he complains. Some cabinet ministers are sympathetic to this argument. One tells me that ‘people want to see that there’s the flexibility to go faster if things are going well’. 

Those on this side of the Tory argument think they will finally have public opinion on their side as spring progresses. Interestingly, though, the government’s plan for easing restrictions prioritises social contact over the economy, which might enable it to maintain public support for longer. The problem for Tory libertarians is that they have very little leverage once the Commons has voted on the restrictions, which Johnson has said it will do before the Easter recess. Once that has happened, MPs don’t have a mechanism to force an earlier reopening.

For this reason, the easing of lockdown is likely to continue at the pace set out in the document. That said, despite the timetable repeatedly stating ‘no earlier than’, most Tory MPs are treating the dates as a target. Johnson himself appears to have done the same, saying that people would prefer certainty to haste. But if the data on vaccine take-up and efficacy continues to beat the government’s models, there will be some very impatient Tory MPs come June.