The main guidelines

On Thursday the 5th of November, the national restrictions replaced the three-tiered system. These new measures will apply nationally for a month until Wednesday 2nd of December, however, it is speculated that lockdown may have to extend for longer as warned by Cabinet Minister Michael Gove.

Businesses and Venues:

All non-essential retail and hospitality venues are closed with the exceptions of click-and-collect orders, take-away or deliveries.
All sports facilities, entertainment venues and personal care facilities are closed.

Public Services:

Many public services will continue to remain open:

The NHS and medical services
Jobcentre Plus sites
Courts and probation services
Civil Registrations Offices
Passport and Visa services
Waste or Recycling Centres

Education, school, college and university:

Schools, colleges and universities are to remain open. This is to support the government’s decision to make sure exams will go ahead next summer, 3 weeks later than usual.

Financial support:

Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has announced he will be extending the 80% salary coronavirus job retention furlough scheme.

Political implications of a second lockdown

With the number of coronavirus cases exceeding 1 million (presently at 1.19 million), PM Johnson has declared the data as ‘really irrefutable’, showing that a second lockdown was vital for people to ‘stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives’. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has also backed the lockdown albeit believing it has come too late as he had originally advocated for a ‘circuit breaker’ back in October. Ironically, it appears that PM Johnson’s opposition this time will occur from within his own party. The emerging discontent stems from the disapproval of a second lockdown; 34 out of the majority 477 MPs had in fact voted against a Commons vote on introducing a new lockdown with several abstaining.

This is because a second lockdown will undeniably have grave and far-reaching economic consequences. UK’s GDP shrank by 20.4% in the second quarter (between April and June), plunging the economy into the one of the deepest recessions in Europe which is expected to drag into next spring. The temporary closures of sectors of retail and hospitality will most likely affect their end of year revenue, an important determinant of whether they will have the capital to continue having barely survived the first lockdown. Meanwhile, the Bank of England has issued a £150 billion stimulus package (increasing quantitative easing bond-buying and maintaining a record low of 0.1% interest rate) in the hopes it will lower the costs of borrowing to help struggling businesses and households and to bolster the extended furlough scheme designed to prevent unemployment. These schemes will also result in an increase of UK debt which would onset austerity measures in the future. Many Tory MPs believe that this second lockdown and additional economic measures were unnecessary, including former PM Theresa May who argued that the three-tier system was not given adequate time to work since after its implementation, the rate of increase in COVID-19 cases appear to have slowed. Therefore, besides the economic reason, the underpinning concern was whether parliament will be able obtain sufficient and accurate data to support its decision-making for and in the future. It can be concluded that the opposing Tory MPs will not stand for a third lockdown beyond the 2nd of December.

by Ke Thie Kiew

The November National Lockdown