Boris Johnson tonight hit the nation with the most draconian clampdown in modern British history.
If it saves lives and halts the spread of the deadly coronavirus, then we might look back in a year and conclude it was necessary.
Accused of hesitancy and dithering, the PM has stopped short of ordering people to stay in their homes and many of the proposals may lack the clarity which has proved a gaping hole in his reaction to the pandemic.
Police stopping people walking in the street would struggle to discover if they had been running or cycling earlier in the day.
And when most jobs cannot be done from home, interpreting whether it is absolutely necessary for someone to travel will occasionally be difficult.
The truth is governing, like policing, relies on consent – and these measures will only be effective if the vast majority of people agree to abide by them.
What the Government has most desperately lacked in this crisis is clarity.
The PM who addressed us tonight is the guiltiest of them all, a man who made a career out of avoiding honest answers to straight questions.
Missing in action at the start of the pandemic and criminally failing to order immediately the ventilators, testing kits and protective clothing vital to beating Covid-19, Johnson’s hesitancy was an Achilles’ heel in the war on the disease.
Time isn’t on our side in a pandemic and a huge, consistent, sustained advertising campaign is urgently required to press home what people must and must not do.
Let’s see it, Mr Johnson. And let’s see it now.
Valuable lesson
Let a million classrooms bloom as parents learn to be teachers now that the schools are shut.
Mums, dads and carers are doing their very best. But we bet few think it is easy – not least because the curriculum is much-changed since they opened their own textbooks.
Another of the precious silver linings from this terrible crisis might be a greater appreciation of the real value of the teachers, teaching assistants and school staff who usually educate a nation’s sons and daughters.
