Since the start of the pandemic, ministers have hesitated in the face of urgency and listened only selectively to scientific advice
When Boris Johnson originally set out plans to relax restrictions at Christmas, he placed himself at odds with the government’s own scientific advisers. Despite their warnings about the potential effects of five days of household mixing, with ministers receiving a paper in November setting out the risks involved, Johnson described any change of position as “inhuman” and attacked the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, for wanting to “cancel” Christmas.
It took the emergence of a new and far more infectious variant of Covid-19 to force the prime minister into changing the government’s position. In this decision, as in so many, the UK (and its government) has benefited from a strong science community that was able to quickly analyse key elements of the new mutation. The government has also gained from a system of science advice that has worked at full pelt throughout the crisis, and which swiftly relayed the bad news: this variant was a potential game-changer.
