Over the course of the past four months, Britain has been forced to grapple with a foundational question of moral philosophy and social science: what are rules, and how and why do they constrain us?
Policymakers have been drawn into fraught attempts to legislate for everyday social behaviour, from how many people we may meet in a park, to how close we may stand to someone in a pub. The document published in May, Our Plan to Rebuild: The UK Government’s Covid-19 Recovery Strategy, featured 53 uses of the word “should”. On 3 July, the Prime Minister implored those visiting the reopened pubs to “behave responsibly”. A form of moralised gossip has developed, focused upon rule breeches and loopholes being exploited around us.
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