Is Boris Johnsons Half-Nelsons approach to Covid a triumph of hope over expectations?
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (Photo: DANIEL LEAL-OLIVASPA)  You read The Waugh Zone, our daily political briefing. Register now to receive it by email in the evening. England is waiting for everyone to do their duty. Admiral Nelsons famous flagship signal, issued on the eve of the Battle of Trafalgar, was for years scribbled in history notebooks by wide-eyed schoolchildren learning the classic history of heroism and sacrifice. Boris Johnson was clearly one of those students, as it appears Nelsons message is now his primary public health policy in dealing with a 21st century pandemic. The Prime Minister said at his last Downing Street briefing that we expect and recommend that the public wear face masks in crowded and enclosed spaces used by foreigners. The phrase management of expectations is popular with politicians trying to mass reaction to a snap election, but this is all new territory. Johnson clearly believes he can somehow massage the public conscience of Covid by simply telling them that he expects them to do the right thing. Proving that this was not just a verbal tic from PMs, Health Secretary Sajid Javid also used the expected and recommended phrase in his Commons update. Javid even had a variation on this theme of a sense of personal duty rather than public demand, saying he would encourage companies to use Covid passports to limit the spread of the virus. Expecting, encouraging and recommending are not, of course, the same as forcing or strongly advising. This is why several doctors and scientists fear that as Freedom Day on July 19 approaches, there have been too many mixed messages from the government on issues such as wearing masks and working. home. Yet Monday showed Johnson and his ministers are starting to realize last weeks mistake by emphasizing personal responsibility. Just a few days ago ministers were talking about wanting to throw away the masks because they were just a little irritated wearing them or because (new here) the face coverings made it difficult to communicate with the hearing impaired. The story continues  The Prime Minister has not been deaf to such criticism and there has certainly been a change in tone and language from just a week ago. While the government wont call its latest courier tips, it wants to spell out what it considers the best way to behave, while insisting its no longer a matter of legality or illegality. . The change in tone was also noticeable in Johnsons implicit threat of what would happen if the public proved he couldnt be trusted to listen to his pleas: the return of some sort of lockdown. After declaring in February that his roadmap was cautious but irreversible, the prime minister attempted his own revisionist story. I hope the roadmap is irreversible  we have always said that we hope it will be irreversible  but in order to have an irreversible roadmap, we also said that this has to be a careful approach, did he said during the briefing. It was the boldness of hope,  la Johnson. In fact, it is not a willful triumph of hope more than waiting is both hope and expectation linked as pandemic policy. The only problem is that while locking can be used to predict the Covid curve, relying on consistent public driving for unlocking is a very uncertain science. On some of Sages most frightening models, we could end up with at least 1,000 hospitalizations per day and up to 200 deaths per day. Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty has given the Prime Minister valuable support for the idea of some sort of easing of restrictions next week. There is no clear evidence that a further delay was going to make a difference, he said, before adding the crucial caveat that what will make a difference goes slowly. But when Whitty then said that the public should avoid unnecessary meetings, it raised the question of how to sort what was needed from the unnecessary. In some ways, the most telling remark was from Sir Patrick Vallance, when he practically confirmed the whispers from Whitehall that a form of hybrid immunity (of those vaccinated and those infected) was now unofficial policy. Dont call it collective immunity. Vallance said: We are on the right track to having significant levels of immunity that will really hamper the ability of this virus to spread and cause damage. And that will bring the possibility that future big waves would go at this point. Which is perhaps the saddest, happiest thing that has been said at these briefings in quite some time. There is certainly some force in the governments argument that July 19 is a valid pivot point given the school holidays and looming winter. It can be used to slowly restore businesses and jobs and hospital waiting lists that have all suffered from the lockdown. But educating some newspapers about Freedom Day rhetoric while urging continued caution is a tricky game to play. The Prime Ministers new phrases on caution may well be heard by much of the public. But with the Commons themselves sending the most damaging message of all (one rule for them, one for the others) by allow MPs to ditch masks while forcing staff to wear them, the dangers are obvious. Shop and tube staff do not enforce masks as is, imagine the arguments once refusniks get a legal license next week. When he was released from hospital last year after his own bout of Covid last April, the Prime Minister said: If this virus was a physical aggressor, an unexpected and invisible aggressor, what can I tell you by personal experience, then this is the moment when we started to struggle against the ground together. The trouble is, his own mixed messages have turned his public health policy into a demi-Nelson, the wrestling movement that can be overthrown by a determined opponent. As Horatio glances at Whitehall towards Downing Street, MPs and ministers feel uneasy about the unlock bet. And the real demi-Nelson may feel that while the audience is being left to do their duty, the Prime Minister is sort of shirking his own. Hopefully (there is that word again) that his message of encouraged caution works. This article originally appeared on The HuffPost UK and has been updated. Related 