By rights, omicron ought to have humiliated the pro-lockdowners. Their apocalyptic narrative has spectacularly collapsed. Daily deaths remain relatively stable, at less than a sixth of the figure projected by some Sage modelling. Premonitions that the Johnson Government had “left it too late” to protect the NHS from the new wave have, so far, proved excessively doomy, with the number of Covid hospitalisations down roughly 33 per cent compared with this time last year. The Manichean fairytale of lockdown legends (Nicola Sturgeon) and libertarian villains (Boris Johnson) has broken out in unhelpful shades of grey, with Scotland’s Covid rate higher than England’s despite tougher restrictions.

Mr Johnson could not have asked for a more auspicious political moment to usher in a new phase of Covid, where we finally learn to live with the virus. His authority has to some extent been rescued, as he has been vindicated by his decision (or at least, that of his Cabinet) not to follow Ms Sturgeon into further restrictions over Christmas. While Scottish business leaders implore her to scrap curbs on restaurants, pubs and large gatherings, some figures in Holyrood are calling for a coherent national Covid response coordinated from Westminster.

With Britain a closely-watched epicentre of omicron in Europe, the PM is well-placed to lead the rest of the developed world, too, as it comes to terms with the realities of endemic Covid. South Africa has done precisely this for low-to-middle-income countries. A relatively poor nation where three quarters are unvaccinated and a health system weighed down with the double burden of TB and HIV, it has none the less ridden out an omicron wave without having to cancel elective surgeries. Having opted for a curfew rather than a lockdown, it has lifted all restrictions apart from a ban on indoor gatherings of more than 1,000 people, and masks.

Here is Britain’s chance to show that ageing but well-vaccinated Western countries with superior health services can do one better, avoiding seasonal restrictions altogether.  

A courageous leader would seize this moment to scrap mass testing (replacing it with regular testing for high risk groups like health workers and delivery drivers). At the same time, they would turbocharge Britain’s variant preparedness plan, announcing a new Porton Down-style complex to develop jabs for future variants (following the initial scramble to develop Covid jabs, UK Government investment in vaccine r&d has proved surprisingly modest). They would launch a revamped antivirals taskforce – dedicated to investment in the kind of treatments that, in combination with vaccines, can once and for all demolish hospitalisation rates.

And yet I fear that none of this is going to happen – or at least that it will happen only the tentative, cowardly and piecemeal way we have got used to. Why? Far from being humiliated by the experience of omicron, the lockdown camp maintains a dismal grip on the debate. Ministers continue to indulge the scientific establishment’s groupthink on free mass testing, pouring cold water on suggestions that it might be scrapped even though only 18 per cent of people who test positive isolate properly. They show no sign of withdrawing masks in schools, despite a lack of robust evidence that the benefits of such a practice outweigh the harms. They appear to be edging towards shortening the self-isolation period to five days, but weeks after the US successfully did the same.

Moreover, far from winding down, Project Fear is becoming institutionalised, as Public Health England’s replacement, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), is fashioned into a propaganda arm, pumping out worst-case scenario modelling to complement Sage. The basic elements that need to be in place to live with Covid – like an advanced bulk vaccine manufacturing industry, and a robust variant preparedness plan – are being held back by civil service red tape. Again, the question is: why? The answer: a combination of state incompetence and middle-class vested interests.

Nowhere is the wicked problem of dysfunction clearer than with respect to the NHS. It does not seem to be being overwhelmed by omicron, so much as by a HR crisis, as sickness absences double. The unfolding logistical nightmare might have been alleviated if only No 10 had had the foresight to build up a reserve force of retired and medical student volunteers. So too the political posturing: for all the shiny announcements about NHS recruitment drives, the Treasury continues to block any attempt to work out how many nurses and doctors are actually needed. Canny hospital trusts, in turn, brief “scary” rises in figures, even when their critical capacity appears to be stable.

Meanwhile, the Whitehall Blob has learned fast that a permanent semi-emergency affords it the best of both worlds. Dysfunctional bodies can dodge accountability. Take the UKHSA – an umbrella organisation that oversees, among other things, the calamitous test-and-trace system. It continues to operate in bunker mode, unable to confirm to Parliament things as basic as its objectives and aims, and how it measures performance. At the same time, bureaucrats can cling to procedure and undermine projects that threaten their groupthink. This appears to be particularly scuppering vital attempts to build up the UK’s vaccine manufacturing capabilities.

All the while, pro-lockdown arguments are still being amplified by influential players. Covid has given a fresh lease of life to Britain’s dying trade unions. It has conferred new strategic power on the HR industry, which has been losing boardroom influence over recent years (ironically too subsumed in the paperwork of its own processes to impact real decision-making). Annual hibernations suit middle class professionals, a newly powerful swing voting force, as politics realigns, with owners and the working class on one side and the administrative bourgeoisie on the other.

It is a fearsome alliance, and one that only a small number of politicians have thus far been courageous enough to properly confront. But Mr Johnson may soon have no choice but to do so. The senior Tory backbencher Mark Harper has warned that “prime ministers are on a performance-related contract” and that Mr Johnson faces revolt if the last remaining Covid restrictions aren’t rescinded soon. The UK is running out of time to rid itself of the failed pro-lockdown ideology. Perhaps the Prime Minister is too.