Do you ever get the sneaking feeling that nothing really … works? Certainly, a few days of dealing with the DVLA or passport office (or indeed, any customer service recently) will have that effect. It is a Kafka-esque ordeal in which robotic apparatchiks direct you from pillar to post, and then back again. “All our advisers are currently very busy,” trills the automated voice, as the hold music begins to seep into your brain. Yet “Computer Says No” is a disease afflicting Britain at all levels – and shows little sign of abating.  

After a brilliant start, Britain’s booster rollout appears to be stumbling amid delays and bureaucratic hold-ups. Last weekend, England vaccinated fewer people than it did before ministers vowed to put the campaign “on steroids” to strengthen our resistance to the omicron variant.

The timing couldn’t be worse. Next week, the Government will review whether new restrictions such as mask mandates and interruptions to international travel should continue. It will also be contemplating further restrictions over Christmas. Based on the direction of travel, and the fact that the Government is clearly in “act fast” mode, things look bleak. 

Analysing the alleged causes of the delay, what emerges is a case study in bureaucratic failure and a feeble capitulation to vested interests that could only exist in the public sector. GPs initially refused to take part in the rollout, which triggered days of wrangling with doctors’ unions to determine which services they would cease offering in order to participate. Eventually, they decided to halt routine health checks for the over-75s, although not before the doctors’ unions had secured a deal ensuring GPs would be paid for duties they were not doing anyway, on top of special bonuses for administering jabs. 

Then came a further torrent of “Computer Says No”, as the NHS delayed opening up its booking systems, reportedly awaiting “legal instructions” from the UK Health Security Agency (HSA), Public Health England’s successor. As a result, NHS chiefs only issued their guidance to the health service last Friday night. The accelerated rollout now looks unlikely to begin until December 13, at the earliest. 

It’s all so depressing. There’s the miserable realisation that the spirit of the initial vaccine taskforce has been subsumed within the bureaucracy. There’s a sense of quiet resignation at the state’s capture by public sector interests – and that perennial revolving door rewarding failure. As deputy chief medical officer, Dr Jenny Harries was notably wrong on crucial points – talking down the importance of testing and ventilation while over-emphasising much less useful interventions like hand-washing. Naturally, when the time came to find a head for the new HSA, who else but Harries got the call? No amount of measurable decline seems enough to prompt even the mildest rethink of the way we manage our health sector. Instead, the NHS will continue to swallow up a vast, and ever-growing share of public spending. 

New antiviral treatments offer another promising route to normality. Yet we have lost much of the resolve that drove the vaccine taskforce. Paxlovid, Pfizer’s new antiviral drug, has been shown to decrease Covid hospitalisations by a factor of almost 10 – an extraordinary result. Initial findings from clinical trials were so overwhelmingly positive that regulators shut them down early. Though the MHRA has yet to approve the drug, the Government ought to be bulk-buying it in advance, as Dame Kate Bingham did so effectively earlier this year. So far, however, Britain has ordered just 250,000 doses – a decent start, but nowhere near enough. 

The testimony of Foreign Office whistleblower Raphael Marshall reveals a terrifyingly complacent work culture. He alleges that working from home in the Foreign Office contributed to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. As the situation deteriorated rapidly, he says, “the default expectation remained that FCDO staff would only work eight hours a day, five days a week”. What business could countenance operating like this? Back in my pint-pulling days, you’d have been laughed out of the pub if you’d said: “Sorry boss, I don’t fancy working late on New Years’ Eve” – but somehow the equivalent is tolerated in the civil service, even when grappling with matters of life and death.

In a way, these developments reflect a paradox – that we are doubling down on the worst of our Covid failures, even as the counter-evidence piles up. 

Working from home may improve productivity in some sectors of the economy, but not everywhere. It has produced vast backlogs in applications for HGV licences and passports – with disastrous knock-on effects. Yet the Government is still flirting with calls to reintroduce home-working; perhaps even longer-term legal moves to make flexible working the default in any new job.

The pandemic should have shown politicians the vanity of fancying that they could control the world, yet their reaction to the new variant demonstrated precisely the opposite. Instead of seeing, based on bitter experience, that the omicron variant was already circulating in Britain, making border restrictions futile, they instantly reintroduced measures – weakening the travel industry, disrupting family life for millions and punishing poorer countries for being transparent in their genomic sequencing. Recent events should have humbled our over-mighty state, yet it has emerged more powerful than ever. 

Easily the most explosive claim, denied by Downing Street, from the Foreign Office whistleblower, was that at the height of Afghanistan’s collapse, No 10 issued direct orders to divert troops to escort Pen Farthing and his menagerie to safety, ahead of his Afghan staff, not to mention thousands of soldiers and interpreters who’d risked their lives to serve Britain. It is the behaviour of a weak-minded, fundamentally unserious country, with topsy-turvy priorities. Given the current state of play, these priorities are about to get both topsier and turvier.