COVID-19 UK Political Analysis by Tim Hames

The latest set of announcements as to which regions and local government areas would fall into what category had a strong sense of the inevitable about them. With London and adjacent parts of Essex and Hertfordshire having been served with a pre-emptive hit earlier this week, the most probable result was that much more of South East England would also enter Tier Three and that it would be deemed too soon to move those parts of northern England which are currently in Tier Three down to Tier Two, despite falling cases there. The downward shifts that were set out (Bristol and North Somerset to Tier Two and Herefordshire moving in to Tier One) verged on the symbolic. As asserted in a FTI Political Analysis two weeks ago, those who expected more would be disappointed.

These details came alongside what had clearly been an uneasy debate within Whitehall and across the four component nations of the UK as to whether, at this comparatively late stage, the arrangements that had originally been announced for Christmas should be reconsidered. The uneasy compromise, for England at least, was that the liberalisation which had previously been set out should endure but that there should be an enhanced public information campaign to discourage households from making the most of their relative freedom during this time and, especially, to avoid intergenerational exposure if it involved the elderly and those known to be suffering any pre-existing medical conditions.

What to do about Christmas is, though, is part of a wider concern which is more intense than had been anticipated even two weeks ago. It is whether a Third Wave of the virus can be avoided and if it were to occur what the policy response required would then be.