The promise of a “final” end to lockdowns in the spring of 2021 is the kind of hyperbole we have come to expect about new products and policies. The Oxford University vaccine may work; it may even be delivered effectively. Meanwhile, Covid-19 is still around, the UK government is extending lockdown for large parts of the country and effective protections are still being ignored, at grave cost.
From the start of the pandemic, the policy choice in Europe has been presented as a trade-off between lives and livelihoods. Since priority was (rightly) attached to saving lives, the livelihoods of large sections of the population have been sacrificed, with income support for workers in the form of long paid holidays called furloughs, and loans and grants for business prevented from trading. As a consequence of widespread business distress and associated redundancies, European countries face a huge problem in reopening their economies in the wake of the pandemic. Forecasts suggest that the UK economy will be 6 per cent smaller in 2021 than in 2019, and unemployment at 7.5-8.0 per cent – roughly double its pre-crisis level.
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