It’s one rule for them and another for us when it comes to Covid-19

Long, long ago, in the early days of the first national lockdown, I watched two cyclists dismount and sit down on the grass in St James’s Park. They were socially distanced, their bikes laid beside them. They must have been resting for less than five minutes, when the not-so-friendly arm of the law – in the shape of two Metropolitan Police officers – approached and instructed them firmly, but politely, to get back on their bikes, which they did. 

Ah, the days when discipline and fear of the pandemic reinforced each other and everyone (or almost everyone) was on the same page.

How much that has changed has been graphically illustrated in recent weeks. The most conspicuous stage of the unravelling came with an announcement about special dispensations for “high value” business travellers to the UK – clarified the next day as individuals prepared to invest £100m in this country or do a deal that creates or preserves 50 jobs – who would be exempt from self-isolation (quarantine) for undefined “short visits”.  

But why such an exemption? This is a virus, yet you can “buy” an exemption from infecting others in the same way as you could once buy a papal indulgence to ease your way to heaven? Is there a point at which your wealth outweighs the likelihood of your contracting, or passing on, the virus? A more blatant example of one law for “us”, and another law for “them”, could hardly be found.

No wonder the new measure, in so far as it was publicised, was greeted with popular indignation. Indignation that might have been greater, had the Transport Secretary not also included journalists on assignment. Are we, too, less likely to pass on the virus than other mortals?

As it happens, this selective relaxation of the law was framed by a new clutch of high-profile violations. First up was Rita Ora, a pop star who sailed into the wider public consciousness with an Instagram apology, after being caught at her own birthday party held behind very closed doors. She then had to follow up with an admission that she had just returned from a lucrative gig in Egypt and should have been self-isolating at the time.

She offered to give the £10k fine that might have been imposed, had any law enforcement actually been applied, to charity. Which was jolly admirable, except to the extent that fines for law-breaking (and by lockdown 2 we are talking the law, not “advice") are not usually optional, or indeed payable to your nominated charity. A police inquiry into the restaurant episode is, it appears, still “ongoing”.  

Then there was the gathering of Sky News luminaries – a serial party – that broke practically every rule in London’s tier 2 book, but was excused by the birthday girl, Kay Burley, as an emergency loo break. In the absence of your actual law enforcement, such breaches leave employers with a dilemma – how can, or should, they patrol or punish what people do in their own time?

With the mood on social media – rightly – incandescent, Sky’s reputation was being damaged. At least one of those celebrating had chided the government early on for being too slow to introduce a lockdown and then been among the most terrier-like in quizzing ministers over the transgressions of a certain Dominic Cummings. Will Downing Street, I wonder, post choice clips of these interrogations on its website? Sky had little choice but to act.

The accused were at once taken off air, and have now accepted suspensions of varying lengths. It could be argued that loss of credibility for a journalist might be punishment enough. 

But where were the police, with their powers to name, shame and fine? So often, it seems now, it is left to nosey, envious or vindictive members of the public to turn vigilante.

Over the weeks, two distinct groups of violators seem to have emerged, in addition to the small number of “principled objectors” and those whose life circumstances give them little choice. At one end are members of the privileged, as mentioned above – including all the sportspeople whose violations have caused fixtures to be cancelled.

At the other end are gatherings where sheer numbers seem to deter intervention. The first Black Lives Matter protest was left largely alone; the crowds who descended on central London for the first Christmas shopping weekend, ditto. The several hundred (mainly travellers, it is reported) who converged on Harrods sans masks may have been a one-off, but where was law enforcement in any of this? Four people were arrested in the Harrods fracas – four.

Meanwhile, the law-abiding majority is doing its best to navigate the government-prescribed complexities in what for this country – Lord Sumption and others are right – constitutes to an intrusion into private life without precedent. They/we are trying to observe the “rule of six”, the law that dictates icy outdoor dining for two or more individuals outside a household or bubble, plus the “curfew”,  and the “substantial meal” etc. Some may even still be singing “Happy Birthday” twice while washing their hands (so long, of course, that it’s not an actual party).

But the injustice is there for all to see. If you have enough money, you are now waved into the country, quarantine-free. If your profile is high enough you will probably get away with a meaningless apology and/or a charitable donation. And if there are enough of you to make law enforcement difficult, then you can probably flout the law to your heart’s content. So far, those handed serious fines are mostly in the middle, caught at student parties, local pub lock-ins and the like. Otherwise, instances of real live enforcement of the Covid-19 laws have been few and far between.

Now you might argue that this is actually a very British approach – an approach that is at one, as Boris Johnson might say, with a national preference for freedom and living and letting live. I would not even rule out, that had the Imperial College model not warned of 250,000 dead and had Johnson and half his Cabinet not been struck down by the virus, the UK might have adopted Sweden’s more laissez-faire approach. It is also worth noting that, for all its recent toughening of measures, Sweden’s mortality rate is still well below ours (709 to 934 per million).

But the point is that the UK did not follow Sweden. We are not – as, I suspect, Johnson left to himself might have preferred – subject to advice that we follow, or not, at our discretion. 

This government introduced highly prescriptive and intrusive legislation – that is not being enforced with any consistency. Some say the rot set in with Dominic Cummings’s flit to Durham and his side-trip to Barnard Castle. I would point rather to the cross-London trysts of Imperial’s professor Neil Ferguson and the weekends spent by Scotland’s former chief medical officer, Dr Catherine Calderwood, at her second home – as conscious breaches by experts who perhaps regarded their own advice as reserved for “the little people”.  

Many months on, what was sown is being reaped, with widespread non-compliance at the top and bottom of the social scale, and a risk that not just these laws, but the law in general, becomes discredited. And when the law becomes an optional extra, to be observed or not, according to your view and how you judge your chances of getting away with it, that is corrosive of social solidarity and not a good place for a country to be.