“DESPERATE TIMES CALL FORdesperate measures.” In moments of crisis when we are afraid and want a national paternal figure to keep us safe, the usual system of checks and balances, of political and legal accountability, can seem like procedural time-wasting. Why bother with a chamber of waffling MPs when we can all see that there is an emergency and something must urgently be done?
In March 2020, Covid-19 was spreading rapidly around the world and there were powerful images of hospitals in northern Italy and elsewhere being filled with people infected by the virus. In response to increasingly frantic calls for action, Boris Johnson announced to the nation on 23 March that “we are giving one simple instruction — you must stay at home”. Those who did not do so would be breaking the law and at risk of being fined by the police.
The restrictions on individual freedom which the Prime Minister announced prevented people from leaving the house except for four reasons: to buy food and medicine, to exercise, to seek medical attention, and to travel to a job if it could not be done from home. These measures were extreme — the most invasive curbs of basic liberties certainly since the Second World War and arguably since the Civil War period in the seventeenth century.
