As crowds amassed in central London at 10pm on Thursday night after people streamed out of bars which closed early due to the curfew, there was confusion, delirium and drunkenness.
“There’s mental issues, cancer, all this other stuff, yet everyone is paying attention to Covid,” said Sophia Warne, outside Cecconi’s on Old Compton Street, in Soho. “Look at how many people are actually in hospital because of it, it’s not actually very much. I think we need to crack on.”
Nearby outside the Montagu Pyke, a Wetherspoons on Greek Street, plastic cups full of vodka and coke sloshed onto the street as one man holding a pint of ale said, “It makes no sense”, before bumping into a woman.
Stood next to a sign saying “Sunak’s specials”, advertising cheap pints of beer, Colin Chen, a first-year politics, philosophy and economics student at the LSE, asked: “How long are we going to wait for a cure for?
“Even if we wait till there’s no new cases, there’s just going to be cases again when people come in from overseas. This pointless curfew is punishing young people.”
His friend Sam Chamberlain, an economics student added: “If you’re not sat in the pub distanced from each other, you’ll be in flats [in groups] bigger than six with people you don’t know. Anyway, there was a table of 10 in there.”
In another group of teenagers, first-year architecture student at UCL, Phoebe Hampson, summed up the feeling among those in her halls who were out with her for the night: “This is freshers’ week, but it’s really depressing. Now you have to start your night way earlier.”
Police officers appeared to berate one security guard on Greek Street because the restaurant had left chairs out after 10pm.
Earlier, as crowds rushed from the first cabaret performances they had seen since March to bars to make last orders, at around 9.20pm, the Treasury’s half-price restaurant meal scheme was blamed for the recent rise in coronavirus cases.
“I think what done it was the eat out to help out,” said Tracey Davies, from County Durham, who was walking to a bar with her husband, Pete. “Everyone went crazy up in the north-east. Everywhere was rammed. I think that’s made the situation a lot worse.”
Pete said: “It was like the busiest Saturday night, in normal times, but on a Monday night.” Of the newly imposed curfew ordering pubs, bars and restaurants in England and Wales to close at 10pm, Davies added: “It’s not going to make much difference is it, the virus isn’t just going to come out at 10pm?” Scotland will impose the measure from Friday night.
Others highlighted what they claimed were rules that prioritised certain people over others. “We can’t have a group of 10 people going out and having a beer but you can go out and shoot grouse with 30 people,” exclaimed chef Ali Borer, who was out for his partner’s 29th birthday.
“It’s actually disgusting. They are messing up people’s lives … closing at 10pm is ridiculous. I don’t understand why. They haven’t explained it,” he said, highlighting that only 5% of transmissions occur in food outlets, including restaurants and pubs. He said the curfew would hit businesses and workers in the sector.
Looking ahead to the coming weeks, Borer added: “We live in a warehouse anyway, we’re just going to have a party.”
As people began to make their way home after spilling out onto the streets simultaneously, there was further questioning of the science behind the decision.
“I struggle to see the logic in it,” said George Buckland, a recruiter who had just seen Crazy Cops cabaret with a friend. “If people are in controlled venues with track and trace then that’s safer than closing everything at 10pm and pushing people into uncontrolled private parties.”
The curfew has been condemned by trade body the Night Time Industries Association, which has also criticised the lack of help for the sector from Rishi Sunak’s winter jobs plan. Michael Kill, its chief executive, said it had been left as “an industry in exile”.
He said: “Shock, horror and despair have reverberated across swathes of the night-time industry as more details of the chancellor’s winter economy plan have been revealed.
“It is now clear that there is no support for businesses in the sector which are still forced to remain closed due to Covid-19 restrictions. Even the businesses that can reopen in the industry are unable to see the benefit of the scheme as the recent 10pm curfew makes operating barely viable … The night-time economy has been totally disregarded by government policy. The government narrative has delivered empty promises and left us an industry in exile.”
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