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Notes -
The UK government did continue being gung-ho for lockdowns "next winter", as in the winter of 21/22. Their failure to implement renewed restrictions that would have lead to lockdowns is likely a confluence of multiple factors limiting their ability to encourage support for them. Some of these factors include:
Less MPs were pro-lockdown now, with more of them slowly being convinced that it was bad policy. Not enough to defeat the government but enough to mean there was organised political opposition to match the disorganised discontent from the public.
Many MPs and the Public perceived that the reintroduction of restrictions was not motivated by covid, but instead to punish people for noticing partygate.
A single journalist asked a question to a covid modeller on Twitter that finally caused the fraudulent modelling justification for restrictions to fall apart, after one of the modellers effectively confessed they were making up worst case scenarios for policy-based evidence-making.
I do not know what motivated the government to do lockdowns in the first place. Nor do I claim to know. And therefore I don't know what motivated them to stop pushing for them as their sole political objective. But I am quite certain that "the public wanted them" cannot explain it, mainly because it cannot explain why the public wanted them without first requiring the government also wanting them.
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