Omicron at Christmas: the making or breaking of Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson has defended his “decisive measures” to tackle new Covid-19 variant Omicron after being accused of being too slow to introduce restrictions.

Downing Street insiders say the prime minister is “desperate” not to wreck the festive period with tougher measures, according to The Sun. Sources told the newspaper that ministers were “gripped with a united fear the public would never forgive them if they ruin Christmas for the second year running”.

As No. 10 once again battles to balance the interests of the Tory party and voters with the economy and the already fragile healthcare system, an expert warned that it might already be too late to make a “material difference” to the spread of Covid. Professor Mark Woolhouse, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M), told The Andrew Marr Show on Sunday that the latest changes to travel rules “may be a case of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted”.

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Johnson told reporters yesterday that the UK was “the first country in the world to take decisive measures to tackle Omicron”. But before any further guidance changes were made, the PM said, his government would continue “waiting to see exactly how dangerous it is, what sort of effect it has in terms of deaths and hospitalisations”.

Mutiny in the ranks

Johnson’s “libertarian instincts dovetail neatly with his highly attuned antenna for self-preservation”, said Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times. The Tory leader faces discontent from a section of the party who see Covid measures as authoritarian, but recent missteps by No. 10 over sleaze “have undermined support with the usually quiescent mainstream too”.

An unnamed MP told the paper that “there are a lot of people who are unhappy and have made it very clear to the whips that if Boris buggers up Christmas again he will have a mutiny on his hands”.

Downing Street has denied that any such political wranglings have influenced its pandemic response, but Shipman pointed to evidence of divisions between politicians and experts on the Sage committee.

Some members of the advisory group have been backing their colleague Dr Jenny Harries, who was criticised by the government for suggesting last week that everyone should “decrease our social contacts a little bit” in order to slow the spread of Omicron.

The PM urged people not to cancel Christmas parties or school nativity plays, promising to “throw everything” at the booster vaccination campaign instead.

Gainsaying the science

“Gainsaying scientific advice is a risky business,” said Paul Waugh on The i news site. Thanks to the UK’s Covid vaccination programme, the consequences may be less serious if Johnson “gets it wrong again on festive fraternising”.

But with his personal ratings at a “record low”, if the PM ends up changing the advice at the last minute, “the main casualty will be his own, already-thin record on competence”, Waugh predicted.

And while No. 10 has pledged to put the booster programme “on steroids” to combat Omicron, The Telegraph reported today that the rollout was at a “standstill”.

Government scientific advisers said last night that Omicron cases in Britain appeared to be doubling every three days. But the booster jab is still not available to book for under-40s, and “the number of third jabs administered in England was lower last weekend than it was the previous one”, said the paper.

Renegade Britain

“At almost every step of the pandemic, Britain has been a coronavirus renegade,” said The New York Times. The country locked down later than most other European nations in 2020, rolled out vaccines faster and then “threw off virtually all restrictions last summer in an audacious bid to return life to normal”.

Now, amid worries about Omicron, Britain “has edged back in line with its neighbours in rushing to protect itself”, although its approach is still “significantly looser” than some, the paper added.

Johnson and his team are due to formally review the current restrictions and decide what happens next by 18 December.

“It’s hard to imagine Johnson doing anything but blessing Christmas gatherings,” said Bloomberg’s Therese Raphael. “After all, a couple seem to have taken place under his nose during last year’s ultra-strict lockdown.”

After weeks of negative headlines questioning his competence and integrity, he is also “no doubt hoping festivities will help reset the mood”.

Exactly how Omicron will play out is impossible to predict, with scientists calculating that “it will be perhaps the end of January or early February before we really see the effects” of this latest variant, Raphael continued. But the NHS “doesn’t have capacity to absorb extra pressures”, so the government “can’t afford to let Omicron rip”.

Johnson has insisted that the UK has taken a “proportionate response” to Omicron so far. The “danger” for the PM, said Shipman in the Sunday Times, is that by January, the “proportionate response may be to impose far greater restrictions”.