Christmas will be a public health disaster if the UK nations don't come together | Martin Kettle

Unless there’s a joint approach now to the challenges of the festive season the consequences will be grim

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In any other year, it would be trite and lazy to be already writing about Christmas when we are still only in October. Yet in 2020 the subject cannot be avoided. If you think Boris Johnson has stranded himself on the wrong side of the argument over Marcus Rashford’s holiday school meals campaign, wait until you think about the Christmas car crash towards which he and his government are now foolishly speeding.

Christmas is less than two months away. This year, it beckons more than usually as a moment of balm, hope and connection amid grim and disorientated times. Yet Britain’s surging rate of second-wave Covid cases is getting out of control. The test-and-trace system is failing. Coronavirus restrictions across Britain are a confusing tangle. Unless he is extremely lucky, Johnson is hurtling towards an unwanted choice between imposing a Christmas lockdown and permitting a Christmas viral explosion in the population. The wrong decision here would make his mishandling of the Rashford campaign look like a pre-season warm-up.

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