Not making the promised June 21 lockdown end is going to be controversial
Yet again Boris & co are over-promising and failing to deliver
Many of the front pages this morning give a taste of the likely reaction if the June 21st lifting has to be put back.
The big question here is how much the government will get the blame. Clearly ministers have to take into account the spread of the new variant and its likely health implications but so many had planned their lives around lockdown finally coming to an end on June 21st as had been promised by Boris.
That date was when we were going to get our lives back again and failing to make it could be a political gamble for Johnson and Hancock whose reputations have been tainted this week by the Dom Cummings revelations. For it will open up even more questions about how they managed this crisis.
Looking back once again the desire of Johnson to give a timetable won’t look smart if events mean that this can’t be met. You would have thought they would have learned from last Christmas when the promised lifiting over the holiday had to be stopped at the last minute by events.
Surely the approach should have been to under promise and over deliver.
There is also the political test of the June 17th Chesham and Amersham by election when the Tories are defending a seemingly impregnable 29% majority. You can see Tory turnout dropping sharply and the outcome will be seen as a judgment on the Tory pandemic approach.