Why should anyone be forced to shield?

The best way (and with politicians sometimes the only way) to know whether people are aware they’ve made a mistake is seldom to put that question point-blank. A reflexive ‘oh no I didn’t’ kicks in. Do you honestly think, for example, that government ministers are privately confident that as Covid-19 swept the country, hospitals were right to send elderly patients back untested to care homes, even with the limitations to our knowledge at the time? Of course not. But something stupid about British politics appears to constrain them from saying so. Possibly, before trying to persuade us, they have persuaded themselves they were justified; and we all do this to some degree. We spend too many of our sleepless small-hours almost persuading ourselves we did not misjudge things.

No, there’s only one way to outwit the defensive reflex. Never mind the past: ask instead whether a person is absolutely sure that next time similar circumstances arise, they will respond in the same way. You can tell at once, even if they find it hard to admit, when the honest answer is no. This (for instance) is how to get a former Blairite/Cameronite liberal interventionist to betray their doubts over whether the Iraq, Afghan and Libyan wars were wise. Though these people will always and stoutly insist they ‘did the right thing’ last time, few would actually do it again next time; and this they cannot hide. ‘I was right’ is somehow easier to say than ‘I’d do it again’. We are correspondingly disinclined to corner people into confessing past error so long as we’re confident it won’t be repeated.

The government’s emerging ideas for dealing with a ‘second wave’ of Covid-19 unwittingly reveal their private verdict on their response to the first wave.