Quiet Resolve Of The British Confounds The Doom-Mongers

Stoicism is said to be one of the Britain’s prime virtues. We are the nation of the stiff upper lip, the Kiplingesque ability to keep our heads in adversity.

- Leo McKinstry

As Charles Darwin put it, “Englishmen rarely cry except under the pressure of the acutest grief.”

Yet the latest twist in the Covid saga seems to have obliterated a sense of fortitude and forbearance in some quarters.

In response to the Omicron strain, the Government introduced a limited set of measures. These include mandatory mask-wearing on public transport, in shops and in communal areas of schools, as well as reintroducing PCR tests and quarantine for UK arrivals.

Projected to last just three weeks, the scheme could hardly be branded draconian. Boris Johnson was fully justified in describing it as “a balanced and proportionate approach”.

Yet it led to a hysterical overreaction from certain politicians and commentators. Judging by their outbursts, you would think the Government was adopting the methods of the Spanish Inquisition or Chairman Mao.

DURING this week’s Commons debate on the restrictions, Tory rebel Steve Baker warned we are “heading to hell – a hell of minute management of our lives by edict”, while in print his colleague Sir Graham Brady wailed the plan “makes us all lose some humanity”.