Vince Cable: Circuit-breaker idea is crude, lazy and defies common sense

Until last week, I had thought Sir Keir Starmer was doing a great job pulling Labour out of the swamp into which Jeremy Corbyn had sunk it. But I fear that he may live to regret his recent call for a new national lockdown. To be sure, the Opposition has much to criticise in the Government’s shambolic handling of the pandemic and in ministers’ contradictory messaging. Siding with the scientists calling for a full national lockdown, when the Government was ignoring their advice, must have seemed like an open goal for the Labour leader. But a ‘circuit-breaker’, which would see almost the whole country once again confined to our homes, a measure the Prime Minister has yet to rule out, would defy common sense.