Rival soccer teams in Germany’s Bundesliga clash in an empty stadium, Italians meet for socially distant restaurant dining and tourists are visiting the Acropolis again. Things are reopening in Europe.
Not so much in Britain. Here, the lifting of restrictions has been a source of bitter controversy, confusion and nervousness. Britons may be pouring into parks and hitting the roads again, but 46 percent say the recent limited changes to lockdown rules go too far. Just one in 10 says the lifting of restrictions doesn’t go far enough. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have refused to follow England’s reopening plans.
For some Conservatives, the public hesitation is out of all proportion to the risk. "Why, when other European countries are firing up their economies, do we remain the most timorous of all the electorates polled?” lamented the writer and former Tory politician Daniel Hannan. Whether or not he’s sympathetic to that viewpoint, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is more inclined to listen to the public.