Days before news of the omicron variant broke, former Vaccine Working Group chairwoman Dame Kate Bingham paid a tearful tribute to her late freedom-loving father at a conference at Oxford University . Nineteen years earlier, at the height of the war on terror, Tom Bingham, a lord of the law, had addressed the same room, warning that while protection against arbitrary detention is the oldest right of man, dating back to Magna Carta, is the first to be reduced in an emergency.

It seemed like a sharp reference as well as a personal one: Dame Kate went on to warn that despite the successes of the task force she once led – which saw the UK become the first major Western country to deploy large-scale vaccines – a massive victory had turned into a “own goal” as bureaucratic inertia set in and officials “reverted” to old practices. She concluded with an ominous call for the overhaul of a broken Whitehall – not only to protect the vulnerable, but “all of us”.

In clearer terms, one could argue that the Whitehall Blob is the greatest threat to freedom in Britain today. And since then, the situation has become much more serious. Because the big risk is that if the blob fails to deliver now, the omicron variant could terrify ministers by putting us back on the path of draconian restrictions – and even new deadlocks.

As the government properly moves forward with a plan to expand the existing booster program, the big question is whether omicron is the first variant to emerge that will require vaccine reformulation. At this point, there is a lot we don’t know and there is reason to be cautiously optimistic. But the risk is there. And as big pharma rushes to find out if vaccines will need to be changed, Whitehall should step up to ensure the UK is, once again, at the top of the queue to get them. .

Dame Kate’s task force did everything to make the UK the most attractive place in the world to develop a vaccine, fully aware that as a small market the country would otherwise be relegated to the bottom of the valley. waiting line. Vaccine production capacity was expanded, seed funding was given to pharmaceutical companies, and clinical trials were conducted by the NHS. She was also not shy about bringing in outside expertise and bypassing the bureaucracy that usually crushes initiative in the public sector.

Today’s task force is a shadow of itself. Led by former London NHS Chairman Sir Richard Sykes, the word in Westminster is that he has been swallowed whole by the chronically flawed Department of Health. The blob also declined to learn more widely from Dame Kate’s task force. An equivalent team set up to procure antivirals proved slow, apparently unable to pre-order drugs in the quantities required. Calls for the creation of similar task forces to tackle other threats such as antibiotic-resistant bacteria (which are expected to be deadlier than cancer by 2050) have also gone unheeded.

Instead, it seems that after a brief revolutionary flirtation with putting result before process, Whitehall has reverted to his secretive, mocking ways. He refuses to divulge details of his preparedness plans against a variant escape. Clive Dix, who led the vaccine task force until April, says No 10 ignored for months his own proposals, which include accelerated clinical trials and cut red tape.

There is also worrying evidence that, far from bolstering its reputation as an ideal client, the UK state is embracing the EU’s anti-business arrogance. Take the abrupt termination of a contract with the French pharmaceutical company Valneva, and with it, the intention to build exactly the type of vaccine factory that would make our market more attractive to the big pharmaceutical companies. Senior Conservatives speculate that a “Bring Back Kate” campaign could start, but ministers will only be galvanized when things get “urgent”.

Even if the current vaccines turn out to work adequately against omicron, we still risk a serious restriction on fundamental freedoms. The blob threatens to botch the expansion of the booster’s deployment to over 18s. There are already fears that many existing groups eligible for the recalls will receive a dose before Christmas. Weekly intensive care admissions among vulnerable groups have increased over the past two months, amid the logistical mess of third jabs. NHS England also struggled with a recall backlog, after wasting weeks clinging to an invitation-only booking system, which left millions stranded.

All of this is all the more worrying given that the threshold for restrictions is much lower than it should be. The metric around which our freedom now revolves, critical care capacity, is stretched. It may only take a small increase in hospitalizations for Covid for No 10 to panic.

Omicron has also allowed the usual suspects to demand tougher measures, before we know anything about the real threat this poses. Everything is alarming: As the teachers’ union calls for the reimposition of bubbles in schools, the broadcast media are asking in disbelief why Boris Johnson is not yet demanding that people work from home. It’s Groundhog Day north of the border too, as Nicola Sturgeon reverts to her usual populist tricks, trying to intimidate the Prime Minister into a policy of tasteless gestures. Yesterday, true to her habits, she called for an unnecessary increase in self-isolation for eight-day arrivals.

The drift towards disproportionate restrictions is all the more worrying as Westminster seems to have few ideas on the criteria for getting out. Previously, it seemed to be settling quietly on a messy ceasefire with the virus, resulting in around 10 million cases and 30,000 more deaths per year. But the talk is shifting from hospitalizations and deaths to cases. Without strong leadership to learn to live with the virus through leading vaccine deployments, the first unpleasant reminder from the public that an escape variant remains a risk as long as the virus is in high circulation could breathe new life into it. to Zero Covid activists.

The late Lord Bingham believed that public loyalty to the tradition of liberty is the most effective safeguard against executive tyranny in times of crisis. But Covid has revealed that at a critical moment such devotion is rare. So it is certain that the task of democratic states is to prevent us from getting into a panic of accounts in the first place. Unfortunately, on this point, the blob threatens to be sorely missed.