CHARLES GRAHAM: Covid is our real enemy - not political rivals

In the end it seems, sadly, to have boiled down to the irresistible force and immovable object failing to compromise over £5m which, when you consider the billions of pounds of public money spent on the crisis so far this year, looks like absolute chicken feed - although it becomes a bit more if replicated repeatedly over the winter whenever another area is elevated to high risk.

Both sides have attracted criticism for their stances: the Government for penny-pinching when livelihoods are at stake, the Mayor for playing politics when a quick lockdown is needed.

But I do think that most of the brickbats are plain wrong. The Government isn’t “trying to control us” as I’ve heard several times this week in vox pops as if it’s some kind of alien menace rather than an elected body in whose interests it is to put the country back on its feet as best it can.

And I don’t believe this is a Burnham ego trip either. He wants to fight for the best deal possible for those badly affected by the latest restrictions.

Perhaps if Greater Manchester had been the first to enter Tier 3 he would have been in a better bargaining position to haggle with Westminster, but Liverpool and Lancashire had already accepted less.

And the Government, which at some point has to start reckoning up the cost of this whole crisis and wondering how to get the debt down, is mindful of setting too generous a precedent (“generous” being a moot word in this case).

People have also been wildly claiming that the restrictions haven’t been working. I think the problem is that they have - but not well enough in some cases. If so, how long is it before we are negotiating our ways into Tiers 4 and 5?