Covid: Wary Johnson careful not to raise hopes

The prime minister has responded to calls that were getting louder for clarity about what might happen next and when.

He pencilled in a date for the country's diary. But 8 March is the hoped-for beginning of the end of lockdown - far from a guarantee.

Political demands for more information from his backbench MPs and the opposition were part of the reason for his announcement. But there was also the relentless march of the clock.

The government had promised it would give schools in England two weeks' notice of whether they would be able to open after half-term.

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With Boris Johnson not expected in Westminster on Thursday, Wednesday was the last viable moment to keep that vow.

With cases still so high, and hospitals still so full, in theory the announcement wasn't that much of a surprise.

Northern Ireland is already in lockdown until 5 March, but will confirm its position on schools on Thursday.

Wales and Scotland are reviewing whether to extend closures beyond the middle of February in the next couple of days. Without dramatic falls in case numbers, they seem likely to be in step soon too.

A full year?

In practice, though, Mr Johnson's announcement still felt like a big admission: that we're heading for 12 months of limits - starting last March - on our lives in one way or another.

Firms and families around the UK will have had to cope with moving in and out of lockdown for a whole year.

Like Tuesday's terrible 100,000-deaths mark, it's a milestone that at the beginning of all of this simply wouldn't have been imagined.

But as time as worn on, the pattern has become familiar: push the dates back, confront the worst rather than hope for the best.

The prime minister altered, maybe, too. You could hear it in his tone when asked what the chances of sticking to his date were. "That's the earliest," he warned, suggesting that a long list of things have to go right.

One cabinet minister described the government's position: "The decision making has been more and more cautious as they've been caught out so many times."

No one perhaps would be more delighted than Mr Johnson if the pace of the disease slows dramatically and the promise of the vaccine comes good very soon.

But at this time, with a buffer of several weeks to keep looking at the information, that's not a commitment that ministers are willing to make.