London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Friday, Aug 22, 2025

Opinion | Covid didn't cancel our Christmas in London. Boris Johnson's lack of leadership did.

Opinion | Covid didn't cancel our Christmas in London. Boris Johnson's lack of leadership did.

How did the anti-nanny-state, good-time prime minister become the first man to demand a no-fun London since Oliver Cromwell? He won't make a tough call.
Boris Johnson, the U.K. prime minister, on Friday officially became the first leader of our country in 3½ centuries to cancel Christmas for millions of people in Great Britain — including the queen.

The last leader to do so — Oliver Cromwell — did it only after having first overthrown and then executed King Charles I and taken his place. As a gesture of fanatical Puritan religious stoicism after he become Lord Protector in 1653, he strictly enforced laws passed during his tenure in Parliament canceling the nation's Christmas festivities and even forcing shops to remain open.

To say Johnson is a radically different character from Cromwell would perhaps be the understatement of the year. Before he became prime minister in 2019, Johnson was known as a good-time guy, an opponent of the nanny state, a frequent partier and a politician happier cutting ribbons and waving at crowds than tackling policy problems.

So how did a politician so bohemian that no one is sure how many children he has (or by how many mothers) finish his 2020 as the Grinch who killed Christmas? By creating a stay-at-home order for 15 million people and allowing everyone else to mix locally with only up to two other households on Christmas Day itself.

Ironically, it seems that it was Johnson's determination to be a good-time leader that doomed Britain to a bleak midwinter. Most of the country had been on a second national lockdown throughout November, in which bars, restaurants and nonessential shops were all closed to avoid a devastating second peak.

Johnson, though, came under pressure from his chancellor, Rishi Sunak (essentially the British finance minister), and his own treasury department to prevent the economic damage they believed would occur if he kept the lockdown in place through December, particularly from limited Christmas shopping and even a limited party season for the hospitality sector. At the same time, he was facing pressure from colleagues and from the media to let people have some semblance of a "normal" Christmas Day.

The problem was — as it so often has been this year — that these two goals were very much in competition.

Letting people cross the country — often on packed public transportation — to meet often-vulnerable parents and grandparents at close quarters and then stay overnight is clearly a massive risk for spreading Covid-19. So any Christmas amnesty would be only remotely defensible from a public health standpoint if cases were at a very low level coming into Christmas.

But reopening the country in early December was going to increase the rate of spread versus continuing the lockdown (which hadn't reduced our infection rate nearly as much as the government hoped, in any case). Opening the country for December might — just might — boost the economy, but it would increase Covid-19 case numbers and risk people's Christmas plans.

So, as he so often does when faced with a tough choice, Boris Johnson tried to pretend there was no choice to make. He relaxed, but didn't eliminate, lockdown restrictions on Dec. 2, albeit not enough to genuinely help our struggling bars, theaters and restaurants, and he also promised, repeatedly, that the country would have a five-day Christmas break to see loved ones.

Sadly, even without the new, more infectious strain of the coronavirus reported to be spreading across southern England, his plan was always doomed. Cases surged through December, just as public health experts predicted they would, and Johnson increased restrictions across numerous regions twice in a week, all the while insisting that people's Christmas plans could remain intact and mocking political opponents who suggested he'd have to cancel Christmas.

Three days later, he canceled the Christmas he had spent so much political capital promising everyone for the previous six weeks. And so scary was the messaging around the new strain of Covid-19 that Britain also faced a Christmas cut off from most of the world — not just for travel, but also for freight and food. (The islands that make up the U.K. have just 2.5 percent of the landmass of the United States but 20 percent of the people. For us, getting cut off from supplies is no festive joke.)

It's a fitting end for a 2020 that has seen the U.K. have an even worse per capita death rate from Covid-19 than the U.S.'s while also taking a bigger economic hit. On Christmas Day alone, the U.K. reported another 570 deaths and an addition 33,000 cases. And now after having had our Christmas canceled and our ports blockaded, with the coronavirus spreading largely out of control, Johnson has refused to rule out a third, national lockdown anyway.

After the Parliament led by Oliver Cromwell's religious fanatics canceled Christmas in 1644, he took and then held on to power — and kept up and expanded the ban on Christmas — until his death in 1660. His ultimate legacy, though, was hardly a glorious one: Such was his unpopularity after his death that his body was dug up by his political opponents and beheaded for treason, with his head displayed on a spike.

Britain's political culture has mellowed since then. But as a good-time guy who's canceled Christmas for the first time in 340 years, he looks set for a political legacy just as cheerful as Cromwell's — and just as haunted by the ghost of Christmas canceled.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Bunkers, Billions and Apocalypse: The Secret Compounds of Zuckerberg and the Tech Giants
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
Taylor Swift on the Way to the Super Bowl? All the Clues Stirring Up Fans
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Apple Expands Social Media Presence in China With RedNote Account Ahead of iPhone 17 Launch
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Cambridge Dictionary Adds 'Skibidi,' 'Delulu,' and 'Tradwife' Amid Surge of Online Slang
Bill Barr Testifies No Evidence Implicated Trump in Epstein Case; DOJ Set to Release Records
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
The CEO Who Replaced 80% of Employees for the AI Revolution: "I Would Do It Again"
Emails Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Character.ai Bets on Future of AI Companionship
China Ramps Up Tax Crackdown on Overseas Investments
Japanese Office Furniture Maker Expands into Bomb Shelter Market
Intel Shares Surge on Possible U.S. Government Investment
Hurricane Erin Threatens U.S. East Coast with Dangerous Surf
EU Blocks Trade Statement Over Digital Rule Dispute
EU Sends Record Aid as Spain Battles Wildfires
JPMorgan Plans New Canary Wharf Tower
Zelenskyy and his allies say they will press Trump on security guarantees
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Escalating Clashes in Serbia as Anti-Government Protests Spread Nationwide
The Drought in Britain and the Strange Request from the Government to Delete Old Emails
Category 5 Hurricane in the Caribbean: 'Catastrophic Storm' with Winds of 255 km/h
"No, Thanks": The Mathematical Genius Who Turned Down 1.5 Billion Dollars from Zuckerberg
The surprising hero, the ugly incident, and the criticism despite victory: "Liverpool’s defense exposed in full"
Digital Humans Move Beyond Sci-Fi: From Virtual DJs to AI Customer Agents
YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it
×