It couldn’t go on.
The sight of groups of MPs gathering in groups to pass laws stopping the rest of us from gathering in groups was not a good look.
It appeared literally like one law for the lawmakers and another for the locked-down rest of us.
So Parliament upped sticks till after Easter.
The Speaker had already announced a ban on alcohol in the Commons so it was questionable how long MPs would be able to sustain themselves anyway.
The forward agenda was thin. Whether or not the scheduled Bill on toilet rate relief (don’t ask) was “essential” was questionable in the current climate.
But before packing their bags, MPs first had to provide legislative authority to the most draconian range of powers ever granted to the state in peacetime.
Or indeed wartime. Hitler and the Luftwaffe never closed the bars or theatres and never imprisoned the population in the way that coronavirus has succeeded in doing.
Forced quarantining, cancelled elections, allowing a single doctor – rather than two – to section people and reducing Parliamentary scrutiny of the state, including the security services.
It’s a menu to whet the appetite of any would-be authoritarian tyrant. And it’s one that worries MPs.
What if, they fear, some of these emergency changes to the way we live were to slip into normality in the longer term?
The Government was forced to accept that the powers enshrined in the Coronavirus Act – rushed through the Commons and Lords in just two days – should be reviewed every six months.
How that works remains to be seen.
Suspicions were raised as to whether the 320-page Bill – yes, parts of it have been up Whitehall’s sleeve for a while – was necessary at all.
The Speaker’s own legal counsel, Daniel Greenberg, says all the provisions are covered by existing law.
He should know – he wrote them.
The Government says the existing ones are “the wrong sort of law”.
All sides in Westminster agree, the country is going through change and it must emerge stronger and better.
The challenges are profound.
Hot on the heels of the virus bill came another, supported by all parties, the Future Generations Bill.
It calls for new procedures to take longer-term thinking into mainstream policy making, presenting Parliament with “an opportunity to act today for tomorrow, and level up opportunity between current and future generations”.
Whatever next? Corona has shown that decades of Thatcherism and austerity have left the nation ill-equipped to rebuild Britain’s economy to work in the interests of all.
Boris Johnson’s reaction has – in spite of his avowed intention to “level up” – shown that the old Tory instinct of leaving the vulnerable behind, like zero-hour renters, remains a first principle.
Let’s hope the brave new world that eventually emerges from the corona crisis is based on more than 1984 Big Brother-style slogans.
