Thread by @APHClarkson

Once businesses give up on enforcing a measure even if it is in place there is no state power that can ensure it is followed in every venue. You can't post cops at every Tesco. So it is worth asking whether businesses still have the will to enforce compliance in everyday life

https://twitter.com/henrymance/status/1411620601769480192

The UK debate around public health measures is constructed around binaries of personal responsibility vs state power. It never properly engaged with state capacity for enforcement, how public and business consent is generated and the conditions in which consent might fall apart

You may oppose a measure because it constrains freedoms. But if it gets public consent the state can use finite resources to enforce it

You may want a measure because it makes you feel safe. But if public consent withers the state's finite resources will struggle to enforce it

And this is often a case where opinion polls can mislead policy-makers. People are perfectly capable of responding to social cues implicit in polling questions one way while behaving very differently in everyday life. It's what happens on the ground that affects state power

Often in UK debate the value of order is undervalued. Without a basic level of societal order anchored through public consent for certain laws and unwritten rules, state power cannot generate legitimacy needed for stability and functioning processes for collective outcomes

But state power is finite. It cannot enforce order through policing power alone. It needs to make difficult calculations about where to intervene and where lack of public consent risks mass evasion in ways that erode its legitimacy.

The end of lockdown will be a fascinating case study of these core dilemmas of public consent and legitimacy faced by all those who wield state power in the service of order and liberty