Rishi Sunak might have opposed lockdowns but we should still be following the science on Covid

Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. Rishi Sunak, loyal chancellor throughout the pandemic, has waited until now to voice his resentment about the Covid-19 lockdowns, and reveal his opposition to them in cabinet. He says that the Covid emergency “empowered the scientists” – as if it was a bad thing to have medics and epidemiologists guiding policymaking during a once-in-a-century pandemic with an unfamiliar but potentially deadly microorganism.

Funnily enough, this opposition was expressed at the very same cabinet meetings when Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, apparently also made her doubts clear. The prime minister, Boris Johnson was also reluctant, according to reports. One might wonder how the lockdowns came to happen. The policy, publicly pursued so enthusiastically at the time, seems to have had remarkably few friends then, and even fewer now.

Mr Sunak goes so far as to suggest the advertising campaigns were designed to “scare people”, though the novel coronavirus didn’t need much assistance in causing widespread anxiety. Ms Truss has suggested, rashly, that there will be no more lockdowns. Either she can foresee the evolution of the virus, or she is ruling out a “last resort” public health measure that will save lives if a more infective and more dangerous coronavirus variant emerges.

Fashionable as it is to criticise the Covid lockdowns and other precautions now, and the influence exerted by the likes of Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance, the measures were essential. If the lockdowns had not been imposed then transmission would have been more rapid, and hospitalisations and deaths would have mounted exponentially. It was crucial to buy time and “flatten the sombrero” curve of cases as Mr Johnson put it.

Had there been no lockdowns, in an era before vaccines, treatments and home testing, then the NHS would have been overwhelmed by the caseload, and even fewer non-Covid cases and other work would have been undertaken by hospitals. If anything, lockdowns were organised too late and lifted too soon to enable the NHS to deal with the backlog of non-Covid patients who may now be pushing the “excess death” statistics higher.

It is cynical of Ms Truss and Mr Sunak to now distance themselves from the “following/guided/driven by the science” mantra endlessly repeated at the time because it was then such a potentially useful alibi for ministers if things went wrong. If the policy failed in some sense, Mr Johnson, Matt Hancock, Mr Sunak and Ms Truss would all have been able to offload the blame to the experts on Sage. Though the policy was spectacularly successful in preventing NHS collapse, now that the myth that lockdowns cost more lives than they saved is gaining traction on the right, Mr Sunak, especially, has decided to bank his alibi and load the responsibility for the “failure” on “empowered” scientists.

The truth remains that the decisions on all these public health matters were taken by the cabinet, and particularly by those most intimately involved in the policy, very much including the then chancellor. If they want to offload blame onto the experts, then they should also stop taking credit for the success of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine programme.

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It all makes the next phase of the pandemic more difficult to manage – for Covid has not conveniently disappeared. Next time, things will be more difficult. The behaviour of Mr Johnson and those in No 10, this new renunciation of lockdowns and the denigration of expert scientists all plays into a new conspiracy-laden narrative of Covid that even rejects vaccination.

“Living with Covid” is supposed to mean ignoring it and its deadly potential, rather than taking sensible non-invasive, non-clinical precautions to limit its circulation, as well as getting behind a strong booster programme. Voluntary mask wearing in crowded indoor places, self-isolation while infectious, and free lateral flow testing would do much to lessen the unnecessary burden on the NHS, and help support the hospitals, GP surgeries and ambulance crews as we approach autumn and winter.

The next prime minister will not want to have to declare another lockdown, with all the costs to business and education that entails. All the more reason to advocate modest precautions now – and follow the science.