Boris Johnson needs to grow up and give Britons the bad news about lockdown

As road and foot traffic visibly edge towards pre-lockdown levels, Johnson must be clear: if people won’t obey the rules, they will be compelled to do so. It’s as stark a message as a peacetime prime minister has given, writes Matthew Norman, and none has been worse-suited to making it than Boris

Related video: Up to six million UK residents may have already had coronavirus, NHS adviser says (AFP/Getty)

For fans of incalculably daft Anglo-American leadership, Boris Johnson’s return is well-timed. Dr Trump’s sudden withdrawal from the UV spotlight to concentrate on patenting his Toilet Duck intravenous drip leaves a colossal void. Who better to fill it than his trusty sidekick in the smash-hit Dumb and Dumber 4: This Time It’s Lethal! If any revered statesman can substitute for the Bleach-Injector-In-Chief, you’d assume it’s the super-schlemiel who bragged about shaking hands with everybody in a Covid-infected hospital.

The prime minister’s political enemies will join his friends in hoping he is up to taking the difficult decisions with more urgency than the Cobra-shirker displayed before his admission to intensive care. His primary task is to remind an increasingly amnesiac population that the danger is as intense now as ever it was.

Every day, the streets and shops grow busier. By some malign osmosis, the idea that the peril is waning, and that lockdown should be drawing to its close, is taking root.

A columnist for the Johnson Hagiographical Bulletin (formerly the Daily Telegraph) gives the flavour. Allison Pearson tweeted on Saturday that two of her friends are “unilaterally leaving lockdown today”, and “are furious with the government”. Many share their feeling, albeit more perhaps because of the government’s inability to protect NHS staff and care home residents than any willingness to limit the death toll. But hey: tomayto, tomahto.

Pearson further tweeted that her friends “don’t need to be kept safe. They’re extremely healthy women in their thirties and forties. With no existing health problems. Covid-19 poses no threat to them”. Although impressively innovative – even Dr Trump hasn’t postulated it yet – this theory may bemuse hospital staff.

If much of your 12-hour shift is spent treating under-50 coronavirus patients without pre-existing conditions – and not just for catastrophic lung problems, but for multiple organ failure, cardiac arrests and, increasingly, strokes – it might be baffling to be reassured about the disease’s harmless to that demographic by a layperson.

We needn’t waste words on the threat of asymptomatic spreading, other than to observe this. With stupidity on such a mesmerising scale seeping into the mainstream, absolute clarity is wanted from Johnson.

Elements within his party and the business community demand a swift relaxation of the lockdown. There are various ways of gauging the foolishness of this. One might underline how little understood the virus remains, for example. Baffling new symptoms are being reported all the time, and we still have no certainty about for how long, if at all, having had the virus confers immunity. Or you could point out the likelihood of an immediate second wave, one that would postpone economic recovery indefinitely.

But happily, there is an easy indicator that ending the lockdown is a bad idea: Iain Duncan Smith, that half-human, half-dunce hybrid of Greek myth, is an advocate.

There is no room for Johnson’s dithering and mindless optimism now – not that there ever was, of course – but the official post-mortem into the lethal misjudgments for which the buck stops with him must wait.

For now, he needs to go on telly wearing his most grown-up face and frankly admit that he cannot tell us how or when the lockdown will end, because neither he nor anyone else has a clue.

He needs to refresh failing memories that anyone – of whatever age, gender, ethnicity, weight, and previous general health – can become mortally ill.

He needs to state that, although a social libertarian, his paramount responsibility is to safeguard human life.

He needs to declare that it will be at least a year, more likely two, until a vaccine is developed and disseminated. He should add that there is no guarantee that any vaccine will work. He needs to be blunt enough to put the fear of God in those for whom the utterly extraordinary is becoming dangerously normalised.

The idea that bad news wants breaking incrementally works in some medical contexts. Sensitive oncologists don’t turn up to work carrying a scythe; they spin out the most gruesome prognoses, partly because they know the value of positive thinking for the mind and immune system. They inspire hope where they can, and delay the Grim Reaper for as long as possible. Yet when it comes to coronavirus, hope lies not in gently finessing the truth, but in delivering it in one brutal blast. This is an incurable condition, and we have no choice but to learn how to deal with it.

As road and foot traffic visibly edge towards pre-lockdown levels, Johnson must be unflinchingly clear: if people won’t voluntarily obey the rules, they will be compelled to do so. It’s as stark a message as a peacetime prime minister has given, and none has been worse-suited to making it. But his previous failures and own alarmingly close call should be powerful teaching aids. In so far as redemption is available, it lies in learning from his mistakes, and abruptly terminating the Dumb and Dumber double act with Dr Dettol across the Atlantic.