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You’ve got to feel for the people of Bolton. Under the government’s current Covid travel guidance, they’re advised against visiting a neighbouring town, but they are allowed to get on a jet to a ‘green list’ country. Travelling to 1,000 miles to Lisbon is fine. A trip down the road to Leigh ain’t so fine.
Confused? I don’t blame you. Confusion was the name of the game after England woke up to the updated guidance quietly placed on Gov.uk 11 days ago. Thanks to the Manchester Evening News, we learned the advice is to ‘avoid travelling in and out of affected areas’ and to meet people outside rather than inside.
The advice wasn’t just for Bolton, of course. It was for eight areas where the Indian variant of the virus has spiked. Yet it felt very much like their two million inhabitants were being placed in a neo-lockdown without any minister having the courage to say so explicitly, and without bothering to consult local MPs, public health chiefs and council leaders.
At the start of the day, cabinet minister Therese Coffey delivered the line-to-take from No.10, which was to say none of this came “out of the blue”. Why? Because Boris Johnson himself had, er, responded in a vague way to a Q&A at a Downing Street press conference on May 14. When asked if people should stay overnight with family in Bolton, the PM had replied: “I’d urge people to think twice about that.” Not exactly crystal clear, one might argue.
The line wasn’t really going to hold, especially as it was obvious that the change in guidance was significant in public health terms. What was baffling was the lack of engagement with the very public health chiefs who could convey that message. No.10 claimed today that “marketing assets”, such as posters and social media messaging, had been shared with councils but there’s little evidence of that.
The main problem with the new travel advice for Bolton and other areas was the lack of emphasis put on it. Guidance is just that, guidance, but its importance can vary hugely depending on ministerial terminology. A week ago, after confusion over the ‘amber list’, Johnson said its countries were “not somewhere where you should be going on holiday.” Yet he didn’t tell the people of Bolton “you should not travel in or out of the town for non-essential reasons”.
The joint rebellion by all the councils on Tuesday, signing a letter suggesting they didn’t want or need special guidance, laid bare their frustration. But despite chatter that a U-turn was coming, all the government did by the close of play was to “clarify” the guidance to tell everyone that new guidance was not new restrictions. The comms failures just kept on coming, the public health messaging shambles became even more shambolic.
Now of course, the move out of lockdown inevitably means more reliance on voluntary guidance rather than compulsory restrictions. Yet the very voluntary nature of the advice ought to put an even higher premium on clarity. ‘You may not be legally prevented from doing something (like travelling to Mexico) but we would strongly advise against it’, for example. The public grasp when they’re being trusted to do the right thing, they just want clear messaging.
The threat of the Indian variant increases further that need for clarity. But perhaps what was most revealing about the past 24 hours is just how nervous the PM is about using “local lockdowns” to contain that variant. When the Tory leader of Bolton council David Greenhalgh and greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham are firmly united in opposing fresh restrictions, Johnson knows he has a serious problem.
Both local leaders today stressed just how furious Bolton people would be with any new lockdown that singled them out after already suffering longer than any other area of England. Greenhalgh, who has warned of civil disorder before, said: “I genuinely believe there is an underlying resentment that can very easily, if we are not careful, turn into anger.”
But the flipside of not having local lockdowns is keeping the rest of the country running at the pace of the areas with most Covid cases. One former cabinet minister told me today that “the rest of us can’t be held hostage” by some minority ethnic populations who are vaccine hesitant in the few areas with Indian variant spikes. No one in government wants to get into the unspoken racial element of this row, but some MPs feel deviation from the roadmap will breed further division either locally or nationally.
Given the huge backlash from the eight affected areas today, the only thing that has emerged with any clarity is that any fresh restrictions will end up angering somebody, especially when the vaccine rollout has proved so phenomenally successful overall. That’s why the PM will be crossing his fingers that the data this week on the Indian variant gets better not worse.