This stealth tax on travel means that unless you’re rich, you’re going nowhere

“Donnez-moi un break!” When he was still a columnist of this parish that was one of the Prime Minister’s favourite exclamations. So I remind him of it now. “Give us a break, Boris.” Quite literally. Give us a break, a cruise, a holiday far away from this damp, sullen English August. A break in a place where we can bathe the wounds of the past 16 months in warm blue water or allow the heat to seep into our weary bones. I am living proof that it is possible to have an idyllic stay on a Greek island that makes you forget the pinging madness you came from (Turkey, my first choice, remained, unaccountably, on the red list and Himself pointed out that a quarantine would undo all the healing good of the vacation and I would return even madder than I was when I left).

I’m afraid I can also attest that our Government will do its best to make your holiday as difficult and expensive as possible. The UK’s traffic light travel policy is Monty Python’s Flying Circus without the laughs. Filling in the Passenger Locator Form is like doing an A-level in How To Escape Your Own Country. None of it adds up which means a worryingly out-of-touch PM is forced to make constant, embarrassing U-turns. Boris has more flip-flops than Ko Samui. Worse, he seems oblivious to the heartache and chaos the restrictions are causing.

Since Monday, double-jabbed people from the US and the EU can come to this country without having to quarantine for 10 days. Hooray, some compassion and common sense at last! Well, up to a point. We are now in the surreal situation where a double-jabbed European resident can visit Britain without any penalty, but Richard and Rosemary, who have a gite in Bergerac, have to quarantine for 10 days if they try to come home. 

When it was suddenly announced that France would go on the amber-plus list, tens of thousands of double-jabbed Brits, who had gone on holiday in good faith, had to make a stressful dash for the ports. Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary, explained that this draconian action was due to the riskier Beta variant being more prevalent in the French island of Reunion. That’s an island which is approximately 5,800 miles away from Richard and Rosemary’s gite. Pretty good social distancing, eh? And now it turns out that even one dose of the wrongly maligned AstraZeneca vaccine offers 80 per cent against hospitalisation or death from the Beta variant. Sadly, there is no immunity for the British people against the clueless, flailing of the Alpha male variant.

At least Rishi Sunak seems to be keeping his head while all about are losing theirs. The Chancellor wrote a stiff letter to his neighbour in Downing Street pointing out that the huge advantage bestowed by our world-beating vaccine programme was being squandered by travel restrictions which are “out of step” with our international competitors. Thanks to Rishi, and to increasingly irate Tory backbenchers, we have been spared an “enhanced risk amber” category which would have caused terrible worry to people booking holidays in a country with fewer cases than our own which, nonetheless, could be turned red on a whim of iron.    

“Everything possible has to be done to prevent new Covid variants being brought into the country,” said the PM, reading aloud from the cue cards given to him by his Sage overlords. It was a very odd remark. Test and Trace reports that there have been no new variants of concern imported from abroad over the past three weeks, while we have thousands of potential, as yet nameless, strains in circulation. Covid-19 is endemic in the UK; no longer considered a priority for hospitals. In June, Covid was only the 26th highest cause of death. There is no reason not to scrap quarantine altogether and to grant British people the same freedom enjoyed by holidaymakers from other countries.

But what really bothers me is that international travel has become a shocking new form of apartheid. If you’re rich enough and can afford multiple tests and private jets, it feels like you can go where you like. If you’re no one you’re going nowhere.