Our blundering, bossy leaders and a new virus casualty… trust

TS Eliot wrote the world would end with a whimper, not a bang – and perhaps the same goes for lockdown.

It is buckling under the weight of its own contradictions, sagging a little more by the day, and might soon collapse.

The reservoir of public goodwill is vital for the Covid curbs to work, and it hasn’t drained entirely – but it has depleted.

We’ll all stomach infringements on our personal lives if there’s an end-point in sight, for the greater good, if the gain is worth the pain.

The problem is lockdown is mired in anomalies and hypocrisies, and even the scientists are split over the rationale for some measures.

Take the ban on indoor household visiting, which was first foisted on much of the west of Scotland, affecting nearly 2million Scots.

This was then extended to the rest of the country (it doesn’t apply in most of England, yet), leading to legitimate warnings over an increase in social isolation.

But we can still go into pubs, however much Nicola Sturgeon seems to be itching to shut them down, and restaurants.

Without them, of course, meeting other households would be difficult over winter – clandestine rendezvous in sub-zero parks would quickly lose their appeal.

Still, it’s hard to detect much logic underpinning this decision – are we really to believe the average pub is more Covid-secure than a relative’s lounge?

Then there’s the farce of the student gulags: campuses have morphed into penal colonies, with their inhabitants forbidden from going back to the family home.

It was all eminently predictable: how could it have been a shock that corralling young people into confined areas with virtually no social distancing (and without having been tested for Covid) would lead to this avoidable mess?

At Aberdeen University, students have been warned fines of up to £250 could be imposed for Covid rule breaches; suspension, and exclusion, could follow.

Higher education minister Richard Lochhead has said students can go home for an emergency, or if they don’t intend to return to university anytime soon.

But short stays with mum and dad are still deemed an offence.

Well-intentioned, for sure, but this is the kind of power wielded in totalitarian states.

Ministers are so in thrall to the scientists devising some of this rubbish that they’re losing touch with the public mood, which can quickly sour.

Talking of anomalies, why are so many libraries still shut, while browsing in bookshops is fine?

It’s not as if they’re an optional extra: soon many thousands will be applying for jobs or benefits, and will depend on the free wi-fi on offer in lending libraries.

That’s not to mention the invaluable role they play in boosting child and adult literacy, and as community hubs.

My local library in Glasgow has been shut since lockdown, and there are fears it won’t re-open: what better excuse than Covid to save some cash?

The ‘rule of six’ – putting a limit on the number of people who can gather together – is another illustration of some of the barmy rules now governing our lives.

I spoke to one public health expert, Professor Allyson Pollock, who said it was ‘incomprehensible’ – a ‘magic number’ plucked out of nowhere.

Even Miss Sturgeon admitted the number six was arbitrary: and yet its impact is huge, another imposition that we’re meant to swallow without dispute, or meaningful debate.

Weighted down by these inconsistencies and injustices, the anti-Covid drive is destined to lose support, not because people don’t buy the risks of the virus, but because they don’t buy the increasingly silly regulations.

The knock-on effects of all but closing down the NHS have been seismic – it will take many months, if not years, for it to get back to its pre-Covid state – and that was hardly perfect.

(Sturgeon: is her lockdown heading for meltdown?)

Going private will become more common as people try to beat massive waiting lists.

It’s possible that the NHS we strove to protect in those early days of peak lockdown may never fully recover from the blow.

That hasn’t stopped politicians on both sides of the Border considering short ‘circuit-breaker’ lockdowns.

It would be a retrograde step, hobbling the economy just as it begins taking baby steps out of the quagmire.

As for some of the hyperbole and high-flown rhetoric thrown around by Miss Sturgeon and others, we’ve all had a gutful.

They’re past masters at this sanctimonious rot about how we’re all in it together.

Oh really? Well, why weren’t the Commons bars subject to the 10pm curfew – until they were found out by a newspaper?

A U-turn followed, but doesn’t it speak volumes about the self-entitlement of our law-makers, when they hit us with rules they wouldn’t abide by themselves?

The curfew demolishes pub profits, weakening an industry already on its knees, and destroying jobs.

But it also increases the likelihood of illegal gatherings in houses, or chaotic street parties.

Police are in an unenviable positon and have steered a middle course that appears to have retained public backing.

But it will become harder for them to keep this up – and there’s a constant risk of being regarded as heavy-handed.

Until recently, Miss Sturgeon spoke a lot about her Covid ‘elimination’ strategy and pointed out, falsely, that Covid was five times more prevalent in England than here.

Now Glasgow is the UK’s Covid capital: but you might remember Miss Sturgeon’s refusal to rule out turning away people from England, in case they brought the dreaded lurgy across the Border.

It did tourism no favours, but can you imagine the meltdown in the SNP if Mr Johnson warned Scots not to venture south?

Politicians of all stripes are obsessed with power, and once they’ve got it there are two priorities: using it and keeping it.

The SNP has proved adept at the latter, thus far, and ham-fisted on the former.

Until, that is, the era of Covid – and now they excel at making public health emergency laws to meddle in our lives.

They never wished this crisis upon us, and doubtless want it to end.

But Covid does provide cover for failing ministers: it’s the new Brexit, and from now on anything that goes wrong in public services will be blamed on the virus.

None of this was inevitable, as the example of Sweden shows: it didn’t lock down, and its economy is performing relatively well.

Lockdown will end not when our rulers decide – but when the majority of the population no longer believes it makes any sense.

In the meantime, public trust in our bossy, blundering leaders, and the irreparable harm they are inflicting on our country, is rapidly diminishing.

*This column appeared in the Scottish Daily Mail on September 29, 2020.