Is it time for Labour to call for Christmas to be cancelled?

When Matt Hancock, the health and social care secretary, came to the Commons to give the bad news about the upsurge in Covid infections, his shadow counterpart asked his usual sharp questions in his usual measured fashion. 

“As things stand, we are heading into the Christmas easing with diminishing headroom. The buffer zone these tiers were supposed to provide is getting much thinner,” said Jon Ashworth.

“So what is his plan to keep people safe through Christmas and avoid huge pressures on the NHS in January? What is his plan to support an exhausted, underfunded, understaffed NHS through January to deliver the care patients will need? And is he confident that our NHS won’t be so overwhelmed in January that it impacts the vaccination programme?”

All fair points, and answered sympathetically by Hancock. But the same questions could equally be directed to the opposition – or, more succinctly, has the time come for Labour to call for Christmas to be cancelled? 

The case for this is powerful. Many of the experts are warning about a surge in cases in January that could jeopardise all kinds of health provision, Covid and non-Covid, just as Ashworth said. Other countries are locking down, and the existing tier regime looks unlikely to get things under control. A call now from Labour to abandon the Christmas easing would be clinically prudent, and would enjoy support from health practitioners and scientists.  

In base political terms, it would put Labour in pole position. It would be a repeat of the situation in October when Boris Johnson insisted that a national lockdown was unnecessary and would be damaging, while Keir Starmer repeatedly called for it. Then the prime minister had to follow Starmer’s advice and impose it in November. When the time came to switch back to the regional tier system on 2 December, the prime minister faced a Tory rebellion and only avoided humiliation in the Commons with the support of Starmer and Labour MPs. 

As things stand, Starmer is demanding a review and a meeting of the government’s Cobra committee to consider the Christmas easing. If, as seems likely, it is to be tightened up, Labour’s stance will be seen to have been vindicated – but a stronger line would yield a bigger political dividend. So far from being “Captain Hindsight”, Starmer would look prescient and wise, his preferred political look. 

Even so, the press, sections of the public, and business interests are fiercely against cancelling or “criminalising” Christmas, with all the economic damage that would ensue. The public is suffering pandemic fatigue, and the latest record redundancy figures point to the economic misery to come. As the furlough scheme and other support is wound down, unemployment will soar through 2021, and with it an impact through poverty in mental and wider health. Plunging the country into a fresh lockdown (which may become necessary whether or not Christmas is “cancelled”), would also exact a heavy price.  

More than anything else since last year’s election delivered a Conservative majority, the government’s response to the pandemic has damaged the standing of the prime minister and his party. The arrival of a vaccine was positive news for everyone, and a political godsend for hard-pressed ministers. However, it will not be able to prevent this second Covid wave, or maybe even a third one if the rollout is delayed; in which case, Labour will still be able to criticise the government for its sometimes tardy reflexes. It will do the opposition no harm to be ahead of events. 

Yet Labour is not running way ahead in the polls. What seems also to be at work is a certain underlying belief among voters that the government is doing its stumbling, bumbling best in the face of an unprecedented global crisis, with a possibly well-founded suspicion that a hypothetical Labour administration led by Starmer (or Corbyn) would not have performed radically better in the circumstances.