Be bold, Boris, and end our nightmare

IT seems to have taken an eternity to get here. But after a wet and dismal spring, summer has finally arrived.

Britain is set to sizzle this weekend in glorious sunshine, with the thermometer touching 30C – hotter than the Med.

Adding to the excitement, the Euro 2020 football tournament is coming home, with England, Scotland and Wales all competing (and – whisper it! – England might have half a chance).

Millions will flock to pubs to bask in beer gardens and watch matches. But because of social distancing rules, many will instead splash cash on booze, barbecues and bigscreen TVs to party at home.

All told, the two-day spending bonanza will total a staggering £400million. And the good news doesn’t end there.

Catalysed by the relaxation of a raft of Covid restrictions, the economy is rebounding spectacularly and should hit pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year – a truly gobsmacking achievement.

Fired by our world- beating vaccine success, the future should not just look bright but positively dazzling. So how dispiriting it is that the sky is darkening.

Boris Johnson, the epitome of cloudless optimism and vanquisher of gloom, looks set to postpone the June 21 freedom deadline by a month, until July 19.

Spooked by a trebling of Indian variant cases, his health panjandrums and scientists (whose previous rune-reading has been woefully inexact) seem to have won a delay. This, the logic goes, would allow the Government to accrue conclusive data on hospitalisations and more people to be fully jabbed. Yet isn’t this just another shameless shift of the goalposts?

From saving the NHS from collapse to protecting the over-70s and health workers, we have met every test set to secure our liberation from this purgatory. But the bar keeps being raised higher.

Yet infections and A&E admissions are far below even the most upbeat Sage projections. Victims are younger, less ill and overwhelmingly unjabbed, while death rates are tiny.

The truth is, ministers are rabbits trapped in the headlights. Terrified of unknown variants, terrified it seems of anyone catching, let alone dying with, Covid at all.

Slamming on the brakes will for most be mildly inconvenient. Many, though, will see their livelihoods obliterated and their health shattered. And the extra bill for furlough and business support will blast another gaping hole in the public finances.

How perplexing our liberty-loving Prime Minister finds himself marooned in such a tricky spot. This weekend he is using the G7 summit to showcase the UK, uncoupled from the corpse of the EU, as a swashbuckling global force.

The best way to display such dynamism to the rest of the world is to be bold at home.

What depressing irony then, if on Monday Boris refuses to cast off the country’s shackles – and instead cowers timidly before Covid’s ever-diminishing threat.