COVID-19 UK Political Analysis by Tim Hames – 6th November 2020

What a week. If a return to a form of lockdown in England for four long weeks was not enough by itself, a bitter, close and disputed US presidential election is there too. With continued speculation as to what might or might not emerge in a EU-UK Brexit deal, this month may prove to be, even by recents standards, one of the most dramatic in the realm of politics ever witnessed. The bars and pubs may be shut but it is not as if there is a risk of there being a shortage of subjects for conversation to pass the time away.

The past seven days have also been a reminder of the sheer speed of events in the COVID-19 era. At about the time that this FTI Analysis was published last week, Cabinet members were still addressing the airwaves and insisting that it was the Government’s firm intention to stick with the three tier system it had devised relatively recently. Wales and Northern Ireland were welcome to experiment with “fire breaks” and “circuit breaks” if they so wished but that would not be the path chosen in London for England. Within a matter of hours the position was changing and so dramatically as to render the term “U-Turn” inadequate for the extent and scale of the repositioning involved. By a little later that night, someone well informed had briefed sections of the media as to what would happen in terms of a lockdown in the week afterwards. It was all over the news like a rash on the Saturday morning. The notion of neither confirming or denying it until the House of Commons met on the Monday afternoon was clearly not credible. As a consequence of the leak a somewhat shambolic Saturday press conference occurred. It is probably fair to conclude that this was not a 24-hour period to inspire much confidence.

So where next in this extraordinary saga and will Lockdown II end on December 2nd?