Boris Johnson is putting more lives at risk by yielding to the demands of backbenchers

Editorial: Fearing a rebellion, the PM has announced he will bring the tiered system to an end on 3 February – this is not how parliamentary democracies are meant to function

Cartoon (Brian Adcock)

In the early months of the pandemic, the government’s catchphrase, offered with equal ease by Boris Johnson, Matt Hancock, Michael Gove and everybody else, was that it was being “led by the science”.

It was a highly convenient phrase. The cover it provided to poor decision-making and soaring fatalities, particularly in regard to the outbreaks in care homes, was total. At the time, and indeed still now, “the science” was not in agreement. The chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, admitted to a select committee that the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) was significantly divided about the best way to proceed.

“The science” could lead you anywhere, both in foresight and in hindsight. In early March, still the pandemic’s most crucial days, “the science” was calling for an immediate lockdown and also calling for it to be delayed, so the peak of the virus would not come after people had become weary of lockdown itself. It was wrong and right, both before and after the event.

Terrible mistakes were made, back then, with terrible consequences, but the “led by the science” trump card was always there to be played.

Now Boris Johnson risks moving into deadly territory. The prime minister has announced that he will bring the tiered system to an end on 3 February, fearing a rebellion from his backbenchers. Those backbenchers are categorically not being led by the science. They are being led by narrow ideology and, by yielding to their demands, Johnson has hit quite possibly the lowest point of his leadership in an almost unimaginably crowded field.

The mood of those backbenchers is arguably best summed up by Andrew Rosindell, the MP for Romford, an otherwise enthusiastic Boris and Brexit backer. Mr Rosindell has been touring the TV studios, arguing that the tiered system must end; that there must be no more lockdowns; and that people need to “get back to work”.

Mr Rosindell’s constituency has one of the highest rates of coronavirus in the entire country. That it is in tier 2, not tier 3, is solely because it falls – just – under the umbrella of the London region. Schools and other childcare facilities within Mr Rosindell’s constituency are shutting at an ever growing rate, when positive cases are found and “bubbles” are forced to cease. Parents must then take time off work to provide childcare, with grandparents too at risk to help.

Unless the virus is suppressed, the blunt truth is that people cannot get “back to work”, yet still Mr Rosindell and his like angrily demand the impossible, in the face of science they make no attempt to understand.

The long years of Brexit, most of which were spent with Theresa May seeking to negotiate it without a parliamentary majority, appears to have mutated the parliamentary Conservative party. Barely a day goes by without a new clique of backbenchers establishing a “research group”, hoping to gain enough members to assume the balance of power over their own party.

This is not really how parliamentary democracies are meant to function. Indeed, to a certain extent, the idea of a political party, with members compelled to vote under the direction of a whip, came into being as a remedy to this specific problem.

The science is far clearer now than it was in March. It is the prime minister’s obligation to the wellbeing of his people to be led by it. If he chooses to be led, instead, by a disappointingly large cabal of thoughtless backbenchers, not only will he visit misery upon people who deserve better, he will visit it upon himself, too.

Mr Johnson has shown himself to be an extremely poor leader. Recent scenes in which he didn’t hire his own preferred chief of staff, and chose instead to use the appointment as a way to placate warring factions in his own office, are evidence enough of that.

But he has to lead his party on this issue. If he doesn’t, he will never be able to lead it again, on anything.