Tom Harwood: Boris Johnson is in trouble

It is just five days until the country expects to be coming together with our loved ones, exchanging gifts and eating far too much in a spirit of jollity and togetherness.Or so we hope.

Already big family Christmas ambitions have been scaled back as we were all advised to have smaller gatherings.Still more are limiting their interactions and cancelling social engagements this week to avoid catching Covid over the next five days.

Much to the detriment of the hospitality industry.And now the prospect of formal restriction is again rearing its ugly head.Yet for the literally hundreds of thousands who have caught Covid in the last few days, a Christmas lockdown is already their reality.

Ten days of quarantine now takes us to the 30th of December. There will not be much festive celebration in isolation.Sorry to bring a dose of pessimism this Monday morning, but frankly, the data does not look good.

Just about anyone in Britain under the age of 35 will know how half of their friends have come down with Omicron in the last week.This thing is seriously infectious.And the issue with that, the issue with so many of my generation being infected now as I myself was two weeks ago, is that events like Christmas present the perfect opportunity for this super infectious strain of virus to jump from the millennials to the vulnerable.

The overwhelming majority will be fine. But here’s the rub:This virus is so infectious that even if it is significantly milder than Delta, even if a much smaller fraction of those who are infected end up in hospital, if all the vulnerable people in the country are exposed to it in one weekend, and a small fraction all need medical treatment at the same time, that poses a significant risk to the NHS.This is about timing.

Don’t get me wrong, everyone will likely get Omicron at some stage in the next few months.The important question is how can we avoid everyone, especially the vulnerable, getting it at exactly the same time?How can we keep the NHS from being too swamped to treat people, not just for Covid but for other illnesses too?

Now, Government scientists are reportedly almost uniformly urging formal restrictions on our lives.Yet we hear this morning that Cabinet is in open revolt against scientists.Some arguments from the cabinet are very legitimate – the question of how much public consent really exists for onerous restrictions.

After almost two years of government yo-yoing with our liberties, even the most cautious commentators are now questioning how much longer this can go on. A recent YouGov survey revealed broad opposition to stringent lockdown measures.Additionally, there is the question of proportionality. Restrictions have costs.

Whatever is decided should always be the minimum necessary to prevent a genuinely overwhelmed health system. Too often officials take a maximalist approach.And then there is the question of trust. The Government told us we were on a one way path to freedom over the summer. That has already been picked away at. And the front page of the Guardian newspaper this morning has photographic evidence of those in Number 10 flouting the rules they themselves set.

Why would the British public follow restrictions that Number 10 itself took liberties with even in the first lockdown? It is a serious point; clearly advisers applied their own discretion to their own rules last year. So why shouldn’t the rest of us do so now?

Yet one Cabinet argument that does not hold water is ‘wait and see for more data’. We simply do not have time to ‘wait and see’. By the time we have waited for fuller data, it would be too late to act. That is the nature of this incredibly infectious virus.It’s hard to overstate how much of a difficult time this is to be in the hot seat. To be making the decisions.

Yet this morning we hear that several options are being weighed up by Ministers.The Telegraph is reporting that Boris Johnson is considering three options:1. Advice to families to limit indoor mixing over the Christmas period. This would not be legally binding. 2. Restrictions on indoor mixing, social distancing, and an 8 p.m. curfew on pubs and restaurants.3. A full ‘firebreak’ lockdown.

Now, this is an interesting set of options. And I have to say that good luck with getting a ‘firebreak lockdown’ past the Tory party. That option is simply not feasible politically. Nor should it be. It would be a kamikaze move for this Prime Minister.

Equally the idea of an 8pm curfew strikes me as bonkers. Have we not learned from last winter? Cramming people into the same space over a shorter period of time is frankly, nuts. And creates a corona friendly exit time rush.

Many of these restrictions would be unjustifiable. But we have to recognise there is a sliding scale of difference between ‘advice’, ‘restriction’, and ‘lockdown’.Lockdown is unconscionable.

But fresh frank advice, particularly to the most vulnerable, that, could be very welcome indeed.For what it’s worth I am resigned to the fact that this will not be a normal Christmas. I will not be seeing as many family members this year as was the pre-Corona norm.But once we are past the danger point of all vulnerable people catching this disease on the same weekend, we can afford to be a lot more normal.

The challenge is communicating that fact…And beyond Covid restrictions, one family will be having a less jolly festive season than even those in isolation. That is of course the rapidly expanding Johnson clan.Rocked by an own-goal instigated crash in the polls, a 100-strong backbench rebellion, a seismic by election loss, and now the resignation of the second most popular member of his cabinet, the Prime Minister is in trouble.

For months now Tory MPs have been telling the Prime Minister to ‘get a grip’, yet now this seems a much more urgent demand.It’s clear this government needs to change to survive. Not just on competence, but as Lord Frost demonstrated, also on ideology, conviction, and political direction.

Boris will continue to lose friends if he continues to U-turn, raise taxes, avoid radical regulatory reform. In short if he continues to squander his historic majority.