Mark Drakeford blames ‘selfish’ behaviour for fresh lockdown in Wales

Mark Drakeford has blamed ‘selfish’ behaviour by the public for forcing a fresh lockdown in Wales.

The Welsh First Minister insisted his 17-day firebreak at the end of October had worked but afterwards some people had acted like coronavirus was ‘in the rear view mirror’.

He said the alarming spike in cases was the ‘summation of small acts of selfishness’ with individuals going the wrong way down aisles in supermarkets, or popping into friends’ homes.

Mr Drakeford also predicted England will have to toughen its restrictions further in the New Year because the ‘cunning’ virus will find a way to spread.

Wales has broken ranks with the rest of the UK over Christmas rules as infections rise, with just two families allowed to form a ‘bubble’ rather than three.

Non-essential shops and hairdressers are being ordered to shut from December 24, and pubs and restaurants will follow on Christmas day.

There will then be a full ‘Level 4’ lockdown from December 28, when the festive bubbles expire.

Speaking on the BBC’s Newscast, Mr Drakeford denied that the Firebreak lockdown had failed.

He said the plan had done ‘everything that we expected of it’. 

‘It set the clock back by three weeks,’ he said. ‘What we didn’t anticipate was the speed at which coronavirus would start to circulate again.’

Mr Drakeford said that the country was facing a ‘very cunning virus’ that ‘looks for every opportunity to spread’.

Asked whether people had stopped obeying the rules as well after the Autumn squeeze, Mr Drakeford said: ‘Undoubtedly after a firebreak people are fatigued, people are fed up, people wish that coronavirus was in the rear view mirror. To an extent some people decide to behave as though that were the case.’

He went on: ‘As somebody put it me last week, it is the summation of the small acts of selfishness that in some ways all of us are prone to in our own lives, that cumulatively add up to the difficulties that we see.

‘It is that small decision to go the wrong way down the one way system in a supermarket. That small decision to pop in and say something to somebody by going into their house when you know you shouldn’t.

‘By themselves they look trivial… cumulatively they add up to the sort of difficulties we’re facing in Wales today.’

Mr Drakeford insisted he was not ‘disappointed’ with the Welsh public, pointing out that he himself almost went the wrong way down a supermarket aisle recently. 

‘This is ordinary human behaviour, understandable human behaviour… it doesn’t need that many people who are not doing that for the impact to be felt not just in their lives but in the lives of everybody else as well,’ he said.  

Mr Drakeford also took a swipe a lockdown sceptics, saying he had followed advice from scientists to ‘act early and act deeply’.

‘That leads you into trouble with some members of the public who are not convinced that what you are doing is necessary or proportionate,’ he said. 

In a grim message to Boris Johnson – who has refused to rule out another full lockdown in England – Mr Drakeford said ‘as soon as you begin to loosen restrictions this virus finds a way to begin circulating again’.

‘We’re going into our next Tier 4 lockdown period after Christmas… my prediction would be that in other parts of the UK as current restrictions are lessened they too will find themselves with numbers escalating and more action needing to be taken,’ he said.