Boris Johnson says we’re on a one-way road to freedom – but the road’s long and we might not be all that free

Spring and summer will be ‘immeasurably better’ than the current reality. But it’s still not clear what the new normal will mean

“We’re now travelling on a one-way road to freedom.” That’s it. They were the words by which the prime minister brought this sorry chapter to an end. It’s done. All over.

Free love on the free love freeway, the love is free but, ah, hang on a minute, the freeway’s quite long and it might not actually be all that free at the end of it, but don’t worry about that for now.

Winter is going. Spring is coming. The crocuses are poking through the frost, the blossoms are ready to burst from their buds and from 8 March you can meet one person from one other household outside not for exercise. And from 29 March it’s the rule of six outside and then it’s this and that and the other and then from 21 June it’s nightclubs and weddings and disco disco disco disco from now till the end of time.

Kind of. Boris Johnson had published his “roadmap” earlier in the day. Schools will be back in a fortnight, the first step towards to life returning fully to normal by 21 June. But all this came with a rather large caveat. That Covid-19 will be with us for good. That the gradual easing of restrictions will lead to a rise in infections, there will be hospitalisations and there will be deaths. That the vaccines aren’t perfect, no vaccines are.

That we may need to wear masks next winter.

It has certainly been a journey. There has not been much hope around, in the last twelve months, but the worst things got, the more boorishly optimistic the prime minister became. The virus was going to be sent packing in twelve weeks, it’ll be back to normal by Christmas, there was Operation Moonshot and world beating this that and the other.

Now, actual hope is couched with cautious realism, leaving the mere public to do what they are now accustomed to having to do, and try to decipher the words that exit their prime minister’s gob to form something approaching the actual truth.

It didn’t help that, having begun his latest stint behind the Downing Street lectern by claiming to be on a one way road to freedom, ten minutes later he would be clarifying with the following: “I can’t guarantee that it’s going to be irreversible but the intention is that it should be irreversible.” When asked about his new found taste for caution, “I won’t be buccaneering with people’s lives,” came the reply. Not anymore, anyway. Being buccaneering with people’s lives was very 2020. Those days are gone now, as are 120,000 people.

Life is going back to normal, now. Spring and summer will be “immeasurably better” than the current reality. But it’s still not clear what the new normal will mean. On 21 June, for example, you should, in theory, be free to have a wedding with as many guests as you like, but weddings being primarily occasions for younger folk, it’s highly likely almost none of your guests will have been vaccinated.

Some form of social distancing measures could be around until the end of the year, apparently, but when England play the Czech Republic at Wembley on 21 June, there could be 90,000 people in the stadium. So the nitty gritty there is anyone’s guess.

In the coming weeks and months, the R number will almost certainly go above 1 again. It’s certainly not clear if the vaccination programme will prevent that, but that doesn’t seem to matter anymore. It’s time to get on with things.

Certainly, it’s time for Johnson to get on with things. “Got Covid Done”. A national hero, yet again, saving us all from a disaster the magnitude of which was very much his own making.