Nanny Martin Risks Shutting Down Country

Two words for the new Government’s coronavirus strategy – security theatre.

- Larissa Nolan

Security theatre describes countermeasures that provide a feeling of increased safety, while doing nothing to achieve it.

It does more harm than good, as it kills off the public buy-in. Instead, the public say: “I’m out.”

People are happy to play their part when the requests are reasonable and sensible. But they know rules for the sake of rules when they see them and they won’t get on board with bollockology.

We now have a law that allows a city centre bar serving a gourmet sandwich to open, but a rural “wet” pub with a dozen regulars cannot. It means keeping 3,500 businesses on ice “because we said so”.