Lockdown anxiety cost young lives – they must not be forgotten

Matthew Mackell was a 17-year-old A-Level student who lived with his Dad and brothers in Kent. Matthew wanted to become an accountant and had recently been handpicked for a work placement with an American investment management firm in London. Then, in late March 2020, the pandemic hit and students were sent into a spiral of uncertainty about their exams and their future. 

On Thursday 7 May, Matthew’s body was discovered in Dunorlan Park in Tunbridge Wells. In a notebook later discovered by his family, Matthew had written of his fears around his future, and his worries that the lockdown might affect his school results. 

Thirteen days later, whilst Matthew’s family and friends grieved his death, Boris Johnson attended a “Bring Your Own Booze” party in the Downing Street gardens. No amount of “heartfelt” apologies will ever bring Matthew Mackell back. 

Whilst the Prime Minister and other party attendees allegedly ate pizza and enjoyed “socially distanced drinks”, students faced school and university closures, cancelled A-Level and GCSE exams and spent months isolated from any semblance of a social life. 

According to mental health charity MIND, 68 per cent of young people said their mental health worsened during the first lockdown. Matthew wasn’t the only young person who took their life during this time.

In October 2020, 19-year-old Finn Kitson was found dead at his halls of residence at the University of Manchester following a surge of coronavirus cases in the city. The university said Finn’s death was not coronavirus related, but his father disagreed tweeting; “If you lockdown young people because of Covid-19 with little support, then you should expect that they suffer severe anxiety.”

A month later the University of Manchester put fences around Finn’s former campus without warning, leaving just one security guarded exit and disabling swipe cards so students could not access any other buildings. Students were treated like prisoners whilst Boris Johnson threw parties. 

Every young person will remember Matt Hancock’s “don’t kill your gran by catching coronavirus and passing it on” remark in September 2020. The government went out of its way to scaremonger young people into isolating themselves from others, and we did so without much complaint. Couples not living together didn’t get to see their partners for months on end, those who live alone went days without speaking to another person and people of all ages living in houses and flats with no outdoor space sweated through those hot May days, unable to even sit down in the park without being moved on by police. All of these people could only dream of enjoying a glass of wine or two in the garden surrounded by colleagues and friends.

It was this relentless scaremongering that meant in March 2021, when 33-year-old Sarah Everard was stopped by a police officer walking home from her friends’ house in Clapham she got into his car and, we assume, believing he was arresting her for breaching Covid-19 regulations.

Wayne Couzens went on to murder Sarah before burning her body. The Prime Minister could enjoy a glass of wine with friends during a lockdown; Sarah died believing that doing the same thing had led to her death. 

In months and years to come, there will be endless inquiries into Boris Johnson’s handling of the pandemic. There will be calls to focus on the daily death tolls. But we must hold the government to account for the lives that were ruined too. We must ask why protecting education suddenly became so unimportant, why the needs of young and single people were ignored and their questions left unanswered. 

In the aftermath of the BYOB party at Downing Street, Boris Johnson must have learnt about the students trapped in their university halls, the deaths of Matthew Mackell and Finn Kitson and the struggles of thousands of other young people like them. And yet, in December 2020, politicians threw another illicit party with seemingly no remorse.

Perhaps the Prime Minister is so used to ignoring his own numerous offspring that he has forgotten that protecting young people should have been a priority throughout the pandemic. Instead, the Tory party has raised a generation who won’t believe in politics. A generation who will be so disenchanted with the entire idea of democracy that they will struggle to believe any government could have their best interest at heart. Boris Johnson and his government will be to blame.