How little lies and rule-bending can tear at the fabric of a society

Earlier this week, the television presenter Victoria Derbyshire caused quite a stir when she said that there would be seven of them around her family Christmas table, whatever the government said about a “rule of six”. 

When she was upbraided as a public figure with the influence to undermine the official message, she apologised and said she “would, of course, follow whatever rules are in place on December 25th”. But plenty of people sprang to her defence.

Their view was that the law – or at least this particular law, if still in force at Christmas – was “an ass”, and that they too would have little compunction in defying it. Given the distinctly patchy enforcement (verging on non-enforcement) of a whole range of anti-coronavirus pandemic measures, from mask-wearing in shops and on public transport, to the two-week self-isolation period under “test and trace”, to the digital-only forms you must supposedly complete if you return from abroad, this is not an illogical view to take.

The chances of getting caught would appear minimal. An awful lot rests with an individual’s conscience, and where there are competing demands – the need to earn a living; a seriously ill or infirm relative; acute loneliness; festive family traditions – it is no wonder that rules are, or will be, bent.

This is a change from the first Covid-19 lockdown in the spring. Then, it was less the incidents of disobedience that drew official comment, but the quite unexpected capacity of the British public for compliance. By July, ministers, up to and including the prime minister, Boris Johnson, were making known that the chief difficulty was persuading people to get back out and about to help restart the economy – hence “Eat Out to Help Out”. Oh, halcyon days!

Whatever you think of what Derbyshire said (before she saw the error of her ways), however, she was at least being honest. To my mind, the most problematical aspect of the government’s attempts to rein in the pandemic today is not the number or prominence of upfront rebels – the powers-that-be can shame them, as they did Derbyshire, or go and get them if they are actually minded to do so. It is rather the covert rule-bending and rule-breaking that the confused messaging almost invites – and risks escalating into mass contempt for authority.

I was on a London bus the other day. When I got on, everyone downstairs was wearing masks. Then two young men got on with their masks around their chins. No one commented, but before the bus had gone another two stops, a majority of those hitherto law-abiding passengers had lowered their masks, too. If it doesn’t really matter, the silent revolt said, it doesn’t matter.

Another example. What do you think about someone like me, living alone, or as we now say, a single-person household, wanting to meet a friend from another single-person household? Under tier 2, we are only allowed to meet outside. Do we lie about our domestic arrangements, or do we perhaps book – as apparently hundreds in this city are doing – for a “business lunch”, where even the “rule of six” doesn’t apply? If the alternative is to shiver over a coffee outside or stay home alone for the duration, what would you do?

All right, that could be seen as a luxury. More seriously, though, what rules would you break (or try to break) to visit a sick relative, to carry on working, to keep your job, to pay your last respects at a funeral? What little lies might you tell to get around rules you feel are unreasonable?  

The point is that there are precedents for mass dissemblance, and they are profoundly dispiriting. It was not just the economic absurdities of communism that condemned such systems across Europe, it was the little lies, the little compromises, that otherwise decent people felt forced to make, just to have something like a normal life. Very soon, little lies grow into big lies, until the authority of the state itself is discredited.

This is the story of repressive regimes today, but Britons have tended to think of ourselves as exempt. We have sustained for the best part of 75 years what I believe to be a myth – namely that had the country been occupied during the Second World War, people would not have collaborated with the occupying power, would not have informed on their neighbours. We would never have told small lies that escalated into big lies for the sake of a quiet – even a possible – life. If that myth has not been shattered by the experience of recent months, it should have been.

When did honesty start to fall by the wayside? I may be in a minority of one here, but for me it was not with Dominic Cummings’s storied trip to Barnard Castle, but with the revelation that Neil Ferguson’s girlfriend had been crossing London to visit him at the height of lockdown. 

For a scientist – and not just any scientist, but the Imperial College professor whose modelling was held responsible for the instruction to everyone to “stay at home” – to have regarded himself as exempt was the science equivalent of “only the little people pay taxes”. Even if he did apologise for his “error of judgement”.

Since the start of the so-called “second wave”, the credibility of the government’s case has been fraying, too. Where once the official graphs and instructions to the public seemed mostly in line, this is no longer so.

I can understand that conditions in different areas warrant different rules, even tiers. But I cannot understand why Manchester and now Nottingham were placed in a higher “tier”, even as the incidence of infection had already started to fall, and quite markedly. If the fall continues after the imposition of tier 3, does this mean that the new rules are having the desired effect – or that, actually, they make no difference and life could have continued as before? What will we, the public, be told?

And how about somewhere like Bolton, under the toughest regulations in the country for weeks now, while infection rates have continued to rise. What does this mean? That even these rules are not tough enough? Or that there is widespread non-compliance? Or perhaps that such rules actually make no difference and that the virus will continue on its destructive way?

Londoners might also have questions. Was all London put into tier 2 because the figures warranted that (they seemed not to), or because a convenient average was drawn between some London boroughs and others, so that the government could find somewhere big to penalise outside the north?

The public deserves an explanation for all such apparent inconsistencies. After all, if there are places where even the most stringent of rules are not having the desired effect, why are ever more cities being shuttered? Why, too, since the Manchester fracas, are local authorities able to negotiate and do “deals” about what are, strictly speaking, public health regulations? If mayors can barter with the authorities about the rules, why can’t everyone?

We all need to watch Wales. Given what is known about the virus, three weeks should be enough to establish whether the “firebreak” hypothesis works. If it does, fine. But if there is no sharp reduction in infections, will the experiment be extended? Toughened? Or abandoned? And will we be told why? Governments, whether in Cardiff or in Downing Street, must level with the people they profess to lead. The alternative is a very slippery slope indeed.