The new wave

Last night, at twenty to midnight, the SI imposing the restrictions that were to come into force at midnight, were published.

Twenty minutes.

This is really the Government making it up as it went along.

The main thrust of the SI, the “rule of six” was heralded on Thursday, as was that the restrictions would come into force on Monday this week. Four days.

Not an emergency, and yet they were issued by an SI, the 51st since the middle of March, signed off not by the Health Secretary, but by the Home Secretary.

These are public health regulations under public health law, yet the Home Secretary signed these off, imposing severe restriction on the freedom of assembly, inside an out, when there seems to be little clinical evidence that the inside and outside restrictions should be identical.

And, of course, as SIs, there was no scrutiny, no oversight, just issued by diktat, as usual.

As previously stated, once Ministers get used to bypassing Parliament, they will continue to do so, coming up with spurious reasons for doing so.

The Home Secretary could and should have used the Civil Continencies Law, but that requires scrutiny after a week and a sunset clause of a month.

Government has chosen to go this way.

And has done so for six months, and if there is a second wave, into next year as well.

It will be very hard to get Ministers to present new business to Parliament first, as they should.

The Speaker has threatened Matt Hancock with Urgent Questions (UQ) on a daily basis if he doesn’t stop by announcing new laws in the media rather than the House. Its as much as he can do.

Over the weekend it emerged that COVID testing has reached maximum capacity, and many tens of thousands of tests are now being sent to Europe to be done. Hundreds of thousands of tests have gone missing, those tested not knowing if they are positive or not.

Dido Harding is still in charge of track and trace and also of the new replacement for PHE. Failure doesn't matter, the loyal are rewarded with bigger and better jobs that they can screw up in bigger and better ways.

The virus now as an R rate of in excess of 1, meaning it is increasing its infections day on day. Other countries face the same issue, but they have a working track and trace system to manage the outbreaks, or better than the UK can anyways. Without a viable track and trace, all that is left are the crudest of tools, lockdown and threats of bigger and bigger fines.

Who would have thought a Government with such a good record in tackling ussues over the last year would have made such a disaster out of a global pandemic?