MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: Let’s raise a glass to hope and an end to the Covid nightmare 

We are promised a new, consistent approach to the Covid pandemic, instead of the zigging and zagging that we have endured for so many months. 

The punitive ‘Quad’ committee, which dispensed detentions and joyless closedowns like an old-fashioned cane-wielding teacher, seems to have melted into the background.

This is, sort of, good news, though it has come to something when making things a bit less bad than they used to be is as near as we can get to happy tidings. The Government will not try to extend the lockdown beyond its original term. 

The rules that apply for the following months will be more rational – significantly, the rigid 10pm pub curfew will be softened to avoid thousands of drinkers pouring into the streets all at once.

And by gracious permission of Her Majesty’s Government, we will be able to celebrate something resembling a traditional family Christmas. 

But we must still endure restrictions on life, work and freedom lasting at least until March, a full year of Covid crisis.

We can only hope that this works, and that the cost to jobs, businesses, family life, human happiness and mental health is justified by the results. 

We can also hope that the ‘Quad’ will disappear entirely, and that scientists will cease to make our flesh creep with alarmist prophecies based on guesswork.

If we can get through this last ordeal there is real hope to be found in Britain – hope of a successful and exhilarating departure from the European Union in the New Year, and hope that a safe and effective vaccine will at last dispel the nightmare of Covid and allow us to resume the normal lives that now seem so long ago.