Let’s embrace joy of freedom
OUR long crawl to freedom is almost over. What a joyous relief that will be.
It is true some sailed through the last 17 months unscathed, working from home in comfort and hiding from Covid.
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Millions more, most Sun readers among them, were not so lucky: The manual workers, supermarket staff, delivery drivers and cleaners who had no choice but to keep their businesses and the country going.
Staff on the frontline of the NHS, now rightly awarded the George Cross.
And the 150,000 people who died without ever tasting normal life again.
But all of us lost precious liberties in March of last year. We should rejoice full-throatedly as they return on July 19.
Pubs reopening with normal service. Football and cricket grounds crowded again. Cinemas, theatres and clubs back up and running. The end of mandatory masks and compulsory social distancing.
Boris Johnson has weathered a barrage of criticism since the pandemic struck, some of it deserved. But let no one underestimate the political courage it has taken to stand by his freedom day in the face of a new cacophony of carping.
He had cautiously delayed a month from the original date, remember. Yet still his critics queued up yesterday to denounce July 19 as reckless and deadly.
Feeble opportunist Keir Starmer, grandstanding Labour mayors and union bosses, leftie doctors, Twitter hysterics. Fringe scientists, sensing their long and lucrative months of TV micro-celebrity may shortly end.
Doomsters with nothing to lose from their scaremongering, all panicked by rising cases — despite that toll being rendered far less significant by the jabs.
What do they want? Another year of this purgatory? If we cannot reopen in mid-summer when the school term ends, it would be insane to do so in the autumn or winter.
Next spring, then? It’s unthinkable.
The vaccines have kept hospitalisations and deaths to levels so low that continued curbs cannot be justified.
The PM is asked how many deaths is acceptable. It is a trick question. He wants none. But we all accept 40 or so daily flu deaths in an average year without clamouring to shut Britain down.
We live with flu. As we will have to with Covid. And no exit date is risk-free.
But let us look forward to what promises to be a golden second half to 2021.
An economic boom is nailed on as pent-up investment and savings are unleashed. Even the unemployment rise inevitable as furlough ends may be nullified by a tsunami of vacancies.
We may get that sunshine holiday after all. And, Danes permitting, we can kick off our summer celebrations at Wembley tomorrow. As Shakespeare wrote:
Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer.
And football’s coming home.
