On the eve of ‘Freedom day’, the UK is in the grip of Covid chaos (paywalled)
UK prime minister Boris Johnson has been promising for months that all coronavirus restrictions in the UK will end on Monday, with a “big bang” freedom day.
But with more than half a million people in isolation as cases hit more than 50,000 a day, one of his predecessors as prime minister says such loose language will only fuel Britain’s third wave. Tony Blair, 68, whose self-titled institute has dedicated its resources to fighting the pandemic, said: “I would have been reluctant to use that kind of language. The one thing we’ve learnt about Covid is that any hope we had at the beginning of this, which is that this would be a crisis with a defined beginning, middle and end, is unfortunately not correct.”
He added: “I understand why everyone wants these restrictions to end but ... you’ve just got to look at the data and it’s pretty clear this is not over.”
One in 95 people in England has Covid, according to the Office for National Statistics. In Scotland the figure is one in 90. The rate in Wales is lower, one in 360, and in Northern Ireland it is one in 290. Hospital admissions rose 61 per cent last week to 4.43 for every 100,000 people.
The figures are sobering after 16 months of unprecedented peacetime restrictions, including limits on social gatherings, compulsory facemasks in public places and Orwellian “stay at home” messages.
Hopes were raised that the worst of the pandemic was over when Johnson announced his plan to end restrictions tomorrow to boost the economy and national morale. Then it emerged that 530,126 alerts telling people to self-isolate had been sent in the seven days to July 7 - a 46 per cent rise on the previous week. The government is refusing to change the sensitivity of the NHS contact-tracing app that tells people when to stay at home. Downing Street insiders claim that the app in its present form acts as the ultimate “emergency brake” and is needed to stop cases spiralling “out of control”.
Blair predicted the number of people being “pinged” would rise further, plunging the economy into even more chaos. A report to be published tomorrow by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change predicts that the number forced to isolate from now until August 16 - when a test-to-release scheme is expected for those who have been double-jabbed - could hit ten million. He adds that the risk with freedom day is that the country is moving in “two completely contradictory directions” by restoring liberties while sending huge numbers home through Test and Trace.
Tomorrow his report will recommend an immediate end to self-isolation for anyone double-jabbed or under 18 who comes into contact with a positive case. He will also recommend a fast release for the single-jabbed if they test negative four days after contact with a Covid case, with quarantine shortened from ten days to seven for those who test positive. “What we suggest is that for the double- vaccinated you treat them differently,” he said. “And even for those who are unvaccinated you use lateral flow tests to get them out of self-isolation fast.
“The starting point for me is that you’ve got to have a consistent risk calculus. There’s no point trying to obliterate risk in one part of the landscape while you’re opening yourself up to substantial risk in another part.” He added that treating vaccinated and unvaccinated people differently is at the heart of a “consistent approach to risk”.
Blair fears that unless the government cuts the level of chaos, millions of people will delete the NHS app. He has not given in to that temptation himself but knows people who have. “You risk the situation where there will be employers saying to their employees ... ‘You know, you’re double-vaccinated, you’ve got this app on your phone, you get pinged - I can’t run my business.’”
He added: “It just doesn’t make any sense. You’ve got a situation with Test and Trace where you are closing down large parts of the economy, which runs in completely the opposite direction to what the lifting of restrictions is supposed to do.
“Nothing is risk-free apart from permanent lockdown and isolation, which we know we can’t do. The question is to take a sensible view of risk.”
Blair believes that waiting until August 16 to change the self-isolation rules for those who have been double-vaccinated is a mistake and risks turmoil in tourism and hospitality during the vital summer months. “I just don’t understand why we don’t do it now,” he complains.
Blair’s report, “Risks and Restrictions: Striking the Right Balance”, proposes giving adolescents over 12 the Pfizer vaccine. He believes the law should continue to require facemasks in settings such as public transport and shops.
“I don’t think it’s a big imposition on people to wear masks, if they’re in spaces where you’ve got a lot of other people - public transport is a very obvious one,” he said. “You might get to the end of August/September and find that you can relax that. I would be worried about relaxing it now ... it’s very hard to make this voluntary ... I think you need to provide certainty; otherwise people start rowing with each other as to whether they should have a mask on or not. I just think you should be pretty clear about it.” He added that in a shop, bus or train, “I would still be wearing a mask ... I don’t think it’s a big hardship.”
Blair’s report backs the introduction of vaccine passports “to restore confidence in hospitality and to avoid super-spreader events”. He would have had such a scheme “from the very beginning”, as happened in Israel.
“I’ve spoken to several of the big tour operators and those operating cruise ships and so on,” he said. “Their customers are not prepared to come on unless they know that everyone’s vaccinated ... the very least the government should do is facilitate it in a simple way.”
Such a scheme would also incentivise those who are eligible for the jab but have not had it. “Significant numbers of the people in hospital are unvaccinated and eligible for the jab. You know, I’m not sympathetic at all. If you’re saying, ‘I’ve just decided not to get vaccinated’, I think you should be subject to more restriction. That’s your choice. But I don’t see why I shouldn’t - if I’ve been vaccinated - have the maximum freedom it is sensible to give to people who are vaccinated.”
Blair, who is the only living Labour leader to have steered his party to a general election victory, holding power for a decade from 1997, has become something of a prophet in the pandemic. He was an early proponent of mass testing, using the term “moonshot” in a report that foreshadowed the government’s later plan of the same name, as well as the use of masks and quarantine.
His biographer, John Rentoul, said recently: “So much of this is obvious to him and he struggles to understand why it isn’t obvious to others.”
So would he make a better prime minister now than he did when he had the keys to No 10? “I’ll tell you one thing which is shocking, which is how much you learn when you get out of the world of politics,” Blair laughs. “And I think ... one of the things you’ve got to do in a crisis like this is really scour the planet for the best ideas going and just absorb them.”
Since the pandemic began, Blair has repurposed his think tank to address Covid-19. It employs 230 people, the bulk of them in its government advisory arm.
He shifted the organisation’s focus partly because of what he perceived as a lack of international leadership. He has used his prominence in the Covid debate to influence policy and is understood to have held meetings with Matt Hancock, the former health secretary, and Baroness Harding of Winscombe, the former head of NHS Test and Trace, to share his thinking.
“I have a network of people that I speak to, not just in the UK but in different parts of the world, and we’ve been very lucky to acquire a really good group of people who are practical-minded,” he said. “I do talk to people in government ... they’re completely open to that.”
Blair has drawn praise from unlikely quarters during the pandemic, including Nigel Farage, the former Ukip leader, who called for him to head the vaccines effort. But would he ever accept a job in government?
“I’m perfectly happy to help in any way,” he replies. “But I understand why, if you’re in government and the existing prime minister, you might look askance at bringing someone like me in to do something.” He adds: “We speak to people in any political party. We just want them to get the right answer. And the work we do is available to everyone.”
He is vexed by the number of people waiting for hospital treatment, which Sajid Javid, the health secretary, warned last weekend could reach 13 million. Blair made cutting waiting lists a key promise for New Labour before his 1997 general election victory, along with a commitment to increase NHS funding by more than a third.
“This is a huge, huge problem,” he said. “I think it’s going to mean a big emergency recovery programme. There are lots of people who haven’t had their treatment - cancer, heart patients, just normal things. I mean, without going into detail, I know myself it’s actually really, really difficult ... to get things fixed at the moment.
“And I think the other thing you’ve got is large numbers of NHS staff who are either exhausted and need a break, or have been through real trauma in the last 18 months. And I would be not at all surprised if we see staff shortages.”
He added: “I think with the health service it won’t just be about money; you’re going to have to organise things differently. I haven’t studied the detail yet, but I’ve got a team of people working on it.”
Having spent much of lockdown focusing on the problems of a country he once ran, Blair has prompted speculation that he is hungry to return to the front line of British politics.
A poll by YouGov published at the beginning of this month revealed that Jeremy Corbyn is even less popular among card-carrying socialists than his old foe Blair. The survey of Labour members found more than half - 55 per cent - had a favourable opinion of the former prime minister, compared with 53 per cent for Corbyn.
But Blair says he is not “planning any comeback”. Not even if Corbyn’s seat of Islington North were to become available? He laughs: “There is still, I’m afraid, a large part of the Labour Party who would not be in favour of that.
“I’m totally switched on to British politics and what’s happening and I’m really interested in it. But even if I wanted to return, the difficulties are manifest. So I don’t spend my time thinking of it.”
