For a few days at the start of the year, it appeared that Boris Johnson’s pre-Christmas troubles were behind him. The polls steadied and his Tory backbench critics credited him with taking a proportionate approach to the latest Covid surge.

His travails can be traced to the botched efforts to prevent Owen Paterson being suspended from the Commons for breaking lobbying rules. Not only were they unsuccessful but the MP resigned and the party lost his North Shropshire seat to the Lib Dems. Mr Johnson was then assailed by a succession of “sleaze” accusations before the pack tore off in pursuit of a new quarry, the allegations of partying in Downing Street during lockdown. Several of these get-togethers happened over Christmas 2020 and could be justified because they involved work colleagues, though they remain subject to an internal Whitehall inquiry.

It is difficult to make the same case for the party held in Downing Street on May 20, 2020 to which 100 people were invited and which the Prime Minister is said to have attended. He has declined to comment about this event, urging people to await a report from Sue Gray, a senior civil servant, into what went on. But this is ludicrous. If the Prime Minister was not there, he should say so and if he was he can offer an explanation in the Commons today. An inquiry is not necessary.

Mr Johnson finds himself in difficulty partly because the lockdown in 2020 was replete with disproportionate prohibitions on perfectly benign activities and should have been lifted at least a week before the party took place. Yet with cases almost non-existent, certainly in London, people remained incarcerated in their own homes to no good purpose. It is hardly surprising they are angry now to find that, in Downing Street, the rules were treated with cavalier insouciance.

We are in a similar position now, with rules in place that are no longer justified, assuming they ever were. Foremost is the requirement for pupils to wear masks in the classroom. No-one working in Downing Street must have their face covered throughout the day, so why should our children? This outrageous imposition should end immediately.

Mr Johnson was under pressure before Christmas from his advisers to go further in England than he has, but the Cabinet was unwilling to countenance the more severe measures imposed in Wales and Scotland. It is apparent that the Prime Minister was being bounced by some dubious evidence which his Cabinet colleagues were right to question. As we reported yesterday, the information they were given to justify keeping people in isolation after testing positive, initially for 10 days, was wrong.

This was reduced to seven days when the consequences for staffing became apparent but advisers held out against a further cut to five days as in the US on the grounds that the Americans counted their isolation periods differently. Dame Jenny Harries, head of the UK Health Security Agency, has admitted that this is not the case.

It is shocking to find that data used to underpin restrictions on our lives were either wrong or exaggerated. In addition to apocalyptic predictions that never came to pass, last month Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, said there was typically a 17-day lag between patients becoming infected with omicron and potentially requiring hospitalisation when the ONS figure is nine or 10 days. This matters because the principal rationale behind the latest measures is the fear of the NHS becoming overwhelmed by Covid patients.

There are compelling arguments for ending the remaining regulations forthwith rather than waiting until January 26 when they are due to expire. Even now ministers are not ruling out an extension as though there is no cost in doing so. The work-from-home guidance alone is causing massive disruption for inner city businesses that rely on office workers to survive. Mandatory masks and mass testing should go, too.

Mr Johnson needs to clear up the mess around the Downing Street party before it goes any further and reassure his MPs that the dysfunction at the top of government is at an end. He can best do this by outlining a totally new approach to living with Covid that does not involve micro-managing the lives of the entire population, save for a select few.