Why is Boris Johnson abandoning the united approach on Covid-19?

BRIEFINGS last week suggested Boris Johnson was poised to announce a dramatic easing of the lockdown in England which would allow beer gardens to open, restaurants to serve meals at outdoor tables, some sports to resume and families to go for picnics and rambles.

When he addressed the nation on Sunday night, the Prime Minister rowed back from some of that - outdoor food and drink seem not to be on the agenda quite yet - but he did ditch the “Stay At Home” message, urged people to go back to work at 12 hours’ notice, lifted the ban on sunbathing, said people could drive to beauty spots and held out the prospect of other major changes to the Covid-19 restrictions, including primary pupils going back to school as early as June 1 and some shops and hospitality venues reopening the month after.

All these things, of course, only apply in England. Nicola Sturgeon has made clear she is taking a different approach, as have the First Ministers of Wales and Northern Ireland.

Ms Sturgeon has said repeatedly, when questioned over the past few weeks on whether Scotland could go its own way on coming out of lockdown, that her preference is for the four nations of the UK to remain in step, but that if it is in Scotland’s best interests to do things differently she will not hesitate. And she has also emphasised she would not make such a decision for political reasons.

Plainly, coronavirus became established in Scotland later than south of the border and we are therefore arguably “behind” England in the stage the virus is at, so it makes sense for us not to act hastily in easing the lockdown.

Scotland is making only one change to the restrictions here - to allow people to go out for exercise more than once a day.

It keeps everything simpler if all four nations stick to the same rules, but as Ms Sturgeon pointed out, that means going at the pace of the slowest not the fastest.

When the stories of Mr Johnson’s supposed plans first appeared, Ms Sturgeon directed her fury at the move to drop the “Stay At Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives” message which had helped persuade the vast majority of people to stick to the lockdown.

But her warning that scrapping the tried and tested slogan could prove a catastrophic mistake was to no avail.

And Mr Johnson duly unveiled his new poster for England: “Stay Alert, Control The Virus, Save Lives”.

At a time when clarity is crucial, the new message fails at the first hurdle. The near unanimous reaction of commentators to “Stay Alert” was: “What does that mean?”

The divergence in approach is portrayed as Scotland - and Wales and Northern Ireland - going their own way. But it is Boris Johnson’s government which has decided to depart from the agreed four-nations strategy, not even telling Ms Sturgeon o the other First Ministers about his new slogan and leaving them to read about it in the Sunday papers.

The official line is that the four nation strategy is still in place and it’s just that some nations might need to go at a different pace because they are at a different stage of what Mr Johnson calls this “devilish disease”.

But there can’t be much argument that England’s switch to the vague “Stay Alert” slogan sends mixed messages to the public and undermines the cause which has united all the nations up to now.

At her regular lunchtime Covid briefing at St Andrew’s House yesterday, Ms Sturgeon spoke from a lectern prominently bearing the stark and simple message: “Stay At Home”.