Britain needs a plan to get its freedom back

An Englishman’s home might be his castle, but the drawbridge has been raised for the best part of a year. And, despite commentators and internet forums screaming that the country is sliding into dictatorship, lockdowns have been popular and, more or less, widely followed.

People were told to batten down the hatches, to wear their masks and bake their banana bread – and, in the name of saving lives, they did. Now, as more and more grinning pensioners get an armful of viral spike protein, the end of the ordeal could at last be in sight. But it won’t be enough to simply relax restrictions and get back down the pub.

Since March last year, the UK has begun the greatest handover of power from citizen to government in its entire history. It might have been well-intentioned, and even probably for the best, but we have now created a situation in which Ministers like Matt Hancock wield, on a daily basis, the kind of influence over the lives of Britons that would have previously been unimaginable. Not even in wartime was the state so intimately involved in people’s lives – not even in the days that followed Norman conquest would some official in Westminster have got away with telling the public they couldn’t hug their nan.

And broadly, it’s been fine. Britain’s democracy and institutions, it turns out, are robust enough to allow for that kind of one-off, exceptional and voluntary dip into what, in different circumstances, could only be called tyranny. So, by and large, the Cabinet has got on with the job that people expected of it. Grant Shapps hasn’t taken advantage of his new powers to build an emergency new runway for medical supplies to land at Heathrow without consultation. Liz Truss hasn’t launched a putsch and declared Norfolk to be an independent, buccaneering merchant republic.

In fact, the usual safeguards on the levers of power would, in many cases, have just got in the way. Coalition governments and thin commands on parliamentary arithmetic usually lead to compromise and, ultimately, better politics. Yet these exceptional circumstances, where dither and delay would have cost lives, was the best possible time for a stonking government majority. When your house is on fire, you don’t want backbenchers on the Bill Committee amending your plan to get hold of a bucket.

That is why countries like China have been so effective at controlling the spread of the virus. The entire infrastructure of the state is well-equipped to check up on potential rule-breakers, and, when Beijing says jump, its citizens will compete to see who can jump the highest. A knock on the door or a text from a minder checking you are still holed up after testing positive might seem obtrusive, but it was understood to be a necessary evil, and it worked. Britain, albeit grumblingly and with a good degree of cynicism, has in recent months had a flavor of just how effective total government control can be.

Now it’s time to wash that flavor from our mouths. Anyone who watched the videos of Derbyshire police strafing dog walkers with drones, or has come across curtain-twitching local Covid enforcers will understand that the pandemic has brought with it a change in our relationship with the state, and between each other as citizens. Gleeful busybodies and nosy officials have popped up as quickly as takeaway supper clubs. That cultural and social shift won’t be settled just by relaxing the rules, and it might not be long before it seeps into other areas of life.

Numerous scientists and public health officials have said that they didn’t think at first that lockdowns would be possible in Western liberal democracies. Wuhan could be shuttered, sure, but who could imagine telling Parisians they were banned from enjoying an espresso and a cigarette in a leafy suburban cafe? No matter how great the benefits were, those freedoms were believed to be inviolable. Well, they aren’t any more.

It’s also not beyond the realms of possibility that those red lines could be crossed again, and for less noble reasons. If a few years ago a politician had suggested that people convicted of alcohol-related offenses, for example, should be routinely barred from pubs and restaurants serving booze, they’d have been a laughing stock. The idea sounds like a policy from UKIP’s first manifesto – the one with the thing about making the Circle Line a circle again. Now, though, after nearly a year of being banned from knocking one back at the bar, a warm pint of ale feels more like a privilege than a right. One that the government can bestow and can take away. Time will tell if politicians also feel that those powers remain their gift to bestow after the pandemic becomes a distant memory.

Debates around vaccine passports demonstrate that we may all have to learn to live with intrusion into our lives for a little while longer, in the name of enabling a relaxation of the most acute rules. This, to most people, would appear to be acceptable if it helps end this period of isolation and restriction. If equally intrusive and privacy-busting measures begin to crop up in other areas of life, however, in the name of crime prevention, economic growth or environmentalism, the public may soon begin to wonder whether politicians are pushing on a dangerous door.

The question then must be, how can we draw a line under Covid-19? Not in terms of caseloads or an exit strategy from lockdown, but mentally and culturally. How can we return to the idea that personal freedoms and individual liberty are inviolable? While Britain has a roadmap to getting kids back to school and reopening beauty salons, it needs a strategy to give the public back its distrust of too much government.

This Prime Minister is, paradoxically, well-suited to putting back the powers he has borrowed behind a “break glass in case of emergency” sign. Boris Johnson is no budding despot, and he knows how popular a return to normality will be. But for years the Conservative Party has neglected its erstwhile libertarian instincts. Not since Margaret Thatcher has there been a serious effort to shrink the role of government in people’s lives, and to create a sense that, in the face of a great many problems, the state is not the answer.

If there is any budding plan in Downing Street to take on the post-pandemic consensus it has not yet been leaked. If recent events are anything to go by, that makes its very existence suspect. But a political opportunity remains in not just restoring the liberties people had before the virus entered their lives, but enhancing them still further. Putting freedom on the agenda wouldn’t just be overwhelmingly popular – in the face of a creeping acceptance of authoritarian policies, a fightback could be ultimately vital.