If the UK government wants to sustain public consent for highly intrusive public health measures it needs to be able to communicate a coherent message that generates the impression that it is in control, knows what it is doing and has some kind of strategy to resolve the crisis https://twitter.com/PippaCrerar/status/1247198749954367489

In the last days the Austrian government has worked to set out targets it wants to hit to enable a relaxation of lockdown over a 2 month period. These debates are very active in all other states in the EU system. They are inevitable. Managing them requires disciplined leadership

The UK government does not have the means or the will to ban debates across UK society about how this crisis should be resolved and when. It needs to manage it in a way that provides the public hope needed to sustain willingness to consent to the full imposition of state power

None of this requires years of research into state formation, state security or state institutions to work out.

These are the basic ABCs of statecraft.

Any state will struggle to sustain a lockdown once loss of public consent for it falls apart.

A state with such low levels of police and military personnel has to rely more than most on generating public consent.

This is what politicians are elected to do.