The government has a lot to think about in the weeks ahead – and there will be many more questions to answer

Boris Johnson and his government don’t look particularly good for following what Labour have been calling for, some time after a national lockdown was suggested, writes Chris Stevenson

Michael Gove told Andrew Marr on Sunday that the second lockdown could stretch beyond four weeks (AFP/Getty)

Chris Whitty made it clear on Saturday how tough a job the government has in dealing with the second wave of Covid-19. “What we are trying to do is have the least bad set of solutions,” he said. 

“The idea that there is a perfect time to act is a complete misapprehension,” the chief medical officer for England told the nation. “There is no perfect time, and there are no good solutions. All the solutions are bad”.

When asked on Sunday whether the timing of the latest restriction announcement showed the government had got something wrong, Michael Gove said that whether or not correct decisions have been made will be decided once we can look back in hindsight. He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr that a decision might look better then than it does now. He added that you should not mark the cards in the middle of a game, before rightly correcting himself to say this is not a game.

A number of readers have already made clear their feelings about the timing of the decision, particularly with the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) having called for a lockdown in September. No doubt we will receive many more letters on both sides of the argument over the new restrictions.

The government has a lot to think about – from the decision to keep schools open to the need to improve the test and trace system and the economic consequences of any decisions (although the health of the nation should come first in my view).

It is lucky in at least one small respect that the Labour leader Keir Starmer is being asked as much about the suspension of former leader Jeremy Corbyn as he is about coronavirus at the moment. Boris Johnson and his government don’t look particularly good for following what Labour have been calling for, some time after it has been suggested.

We can expect more difficult questions coming for the government, from the opposition – and likely our readers too.

Yours,

Chris Stevenson

Editor, Voices