Alarming Number of Brits Want Restrictions to Continue Permanently, According to New Poll

It's not just SAGE member and renowned Communist Susan Michie who believes some lockdown measures should stay forever. Polling suggests that an alarmingly high percentage of Brits support permanent mask and curfew rules.

2 min read

Last month, leading SAGE member and renowned Communist Susan Michie caused a stir (among sceptics, at least) by suggesting that mask-wearing and social distancing should become part of our “normal” routine behaviour and stay in place “forever“. Unfortunately, her view is not quite as fringe as we might hope.

New polling by Ipsos MORI for the Economist suggests that a high percentage of Brits believe a number of lockdown restrictions should stay in place “permanently”, including nighttime curfews (19%), travel quarantine (35%), and face masks (a whopping 40%!). Well over 40% of Brits also believe that only those who have been vaccinated against Covid – and are able to prove it – should be allowed to travel abroad (“permanently”).

Matthew Holehouse, a British Politics Correspondent at the Economist, says this could be an anomalous result because we’re living through a “very strange time for public opinion”: “Do some people struggle to differentiate how they feel now from how they’ll feel once covid is gone?” Either way, the results are alarming.

The write-up from the Economist is worth reading if you can get past the paywall.

Stop Press: There’s bad news from YouGov, too. Its latest polling suggests that more than one-fifth of Brits are “very nervous” about lockdown restrictions ending and more than 50% are either “very nervous” or “fairly nervous”.

What kind of nation have we become?

The YouGov findings are also worth viewing in full.

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255 Comments
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Think Harder
Think Harder
5 years ago

When the economy blows, totalitarianism really kicks in and they are facing exterme hardship the idiot sheeple will look surprised and want someone to blame. Then it’ll be Nazism all over again. Get ready to wear your “unclean” badges.

Jane G
Jane G
5 years ago

I was one of the 19% ‘Not at all nervous’ cohort.

debra
debra
5 years ago

The answer is simple – we need to recruit the Behavioural Scientists and do a positive PsyOps nudging campaign. Sorted, You’re welcome my invoice is in the post.

Newman20
Newman20
5 years ago

Brainwashed morons.

gedhurst
gedhurst
5 years ago

All the stupid mask wearers are about to be surprised by graphene oxide contamination. Evolution is remorseless and relentless.

flyingjohn
flyingjohn
5 years ago

Complete BS. The polls lie. All ‘official’ polls have sponsors who have paid for them. He who pays the piper calls the tune.

Norman
Norman
5 years ago

It was a poll of Guardian readers who knit their own socks from sustainable hemp fibre.

OKUK
OKUK
5 years ago

ATL is too accepting of these poll findings.

  1. The Economist is the in house journal of the Globalist movement. The pollsters will know what results they wanted.
  2. We’ve seen time and time again polls get things amazingly wrong. Even in the crooked 2020 US Presidential election where Trump’s vote share was dramatically cut by corruption, the pollsters still were 5% or more out in their predictions of Trump’s tally.
  3. If you ask someone “Should you be nervous about catching the ebola virus?” people will tend to say yes because “ebola virus” summons up various alarming mental images and you’ve planted the idea that that perhaps they should be nervous. There’s no proper context to the question. By contrast, if you had asked poeple “In .the last month, have you been concerned at any time about being infected by the ebola virus?” the answer would likely be 100% saying no. It’s very easy to manipulate people’s thinking through poll questions.
Gessler
Gessler
5 years ago

When the Berlin Wall came down many East Germans were clearly ecstatic and embraced the future. Many, however, did not and if asked will still tell you (as they have told me) that the old days were, on the whole, probably better, i.e., less crime, more security, etc. But when I asked if they would go back to the old days if it were possible to do so, they told me they would not. Go figure.

I have no idea how accurate these polls are and whether they reflect the views of wider society. Anecdotally, my own experience is that some people are nervous, none of them frightened, but most are looking forward to normal. Ultimately, the majority will follow what the majority do and if they are allowed to live normally for a sufficient period of time, I am sure that the vast majority will just be getting on with their lives as they have done for millennia. Some will continue to wear masks, just as they apparently did after the Spanish Flu, but they will fizzle out too. I’m sure there will be a few diehard mask-wearers but, in truth, they will probably be the kind of people… Read more »

chaos
chaos
5 years ago
Reply to  Gessler

Maybe David Hasselhoff will come and sing to us after we have freed ourselves from Stanley, Nut Nut, alcoholic Boris, The Spider Memo Camilla’s tampon, and Goldman Rockerfeller Klaus Sachs.

penners1111
penners1111
5 years ago

You have to bear in mind, You Gov will try and get the result thier paymasters/client are requesting. They will target known people to ensure this happens. Don’t believe everything you read from You Gov.

Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
5 years ago
Reply to  penners1111

Would anyone buy a second hand car from Zahawi?

A YouGuv poll says 99% would.

ebygum
ebygum
5 years ago

Oh come on! The questions about pubs, nightclubs and 10pm curfews give it away!
The miserable fu****s who answered those questions in the negative NEVER go to pubs, clubs or out after 8pm for goodness sake.
This is all just psy-ops to make us believe it’s a majority belief, I don’t buy it for one minute.
Everybody I know will be ditching the masks, those that say they won’t will follow the flock when they see they’re in a minority….they are sheep after all.

northeastnostromo
northeastnostromo
5 years ago

Clichés become cliches because they are true – this country is finished.

chaos
chaos
5 years ago

Indeed. Whilst the Chinese can be nationalistic.. they make everything.. and they are not buying into the WEF Great Shit… they will own us all because of this.

I just went for a walk.. saw three white lads dealing drugs down an alley. Here is the conversation I heard as I sauntered past (with my knife ready in my pocket).

Dis the tiing man.

Dat nice green.

Eazy.. oh my dayz…

The country is done.

William Gruff
William Gruff
5 years ago

The cliché is that clichés are truisms, which is true.

Rogerborg
Rogerborg
5 years ago

These are both online polls.

So we’re not seeing what Britons think, we’re seeing what the CCP are telling us that we should think.

No? The Mandarin Empire is a ruthless ethnostate Hell bent on destroying the West, and they have technological capability, near-endless manpower (literally manpower, they have 20 million or more excess penises), and no ethics.

I’d want to hear reasons why they haven’t long since captured all major Western polling companies.

Emerald Fox
Emerald Fox
5 years ago
Reply to  Rogerborg

Yes, I think you are on the right track here. If the Chinese wanted to, they could send a few warships round to British ports, unload their armies, and that’d be that with all the Covid bedwetters cowering behind their sofas. They’d have help from all the Chinese already in the UK, all those ‘university students’.
Been to Oxford lately? More like ‘Beijing-on-Thames’.

Perhaps their plan is to keep the British as their slaves, like the Uighurs, but in Britain, manufacturing whatever it is they want.

If there is one good thing to come out of such a scenario, it is that the Chinese won’t be bending the knee to the likes of Sasha Johnson.

Gdog
Gdog
5 years ago

I take part in the yougov polling and I am always amazed that loads of people say the haven’t got and never had Covid and have had two jabs then go on to take the we’re still buying project fear and opt for all things lock down and more! There’s a useful bit at the end were you can comment that I use to give it too um with both barrels!!

Martin Frost
Martin Frost
5 years ago

The explanation for this polling is simple. Saturation state sponsored propaganda resulting in a brainwashed and scared population combined with a realisation by some people that the continuation of the emergency benefits them personally. It is not rocket science.

Jess
Jess
5 years ago

A friend tells me he’s going to continue wearing his mask after the 19th, whenever he’s travelling on DLR (Docklands Light Railway) near his home.
“I’m not on it for more than 10 minutes” he says, “so it’s no problem.”

The irony of this abnormal behaviour seems to elude people completely.

smithey
smithey
5 years ago
Reply to  Jess

If your friend wants to make a tit of himself then fine let him. It’s when such people think their behaviour must be imposed on everyone else whether they like it or not that it becomes a problem.

William Gruff
William Gruff
5 years ago
Reply to  Jess

I remember the packed-like-sardines strap hanging commute to and within London and would have liked something to prevent the inhalation of other people’s rancid breath.

Crystal Decanter
Crystal Decanter
5 years ago

Maybe on Twitter but not out on the street

MrkMtchll
MrkMtchll
5 years ago

What kind of nation have we become?
One to leave?

smithey
smithey
5 years ago
Reply to  MrkMtchll

Correct, but the problem is where to go? Most other countries in the world are indulging in this insanity.

AmyMutts
AmyMutts
5 years ago

I was sitting with my husband in a sports bar in a caravan holiday park in Weymouth. A very bright spark put the children’s soft play in it & our daughter was thrilled to find one open! We watched a family walk into the area, fully masked. They sat at a table and carefully folded & put their masks into a rucksack. They then decided that table didn’t have the view of the soft play that they wanted. They pulled out the folded squares of fabric and held them up to their mouths (still folded) as they proceeded to crouch and move 2 tables over. Their kid then happily played with our daughter for hours…in the petri dish that is soft play.

I wouldn’t trust any answer those people gave to a pollster.

smithey
smithey
5 years ago
Reply to  AmyMutts

Trouble is those in charge use the views of such idiots as an excuse to turn the country into a totalitarian regime (as an aside it does amuse me that so many people believe that if they are sitting round a table with friends the virus will leave them alone but if they stand up and step away from the table without donning a loose piece of fabric around their mouth and nose the dreaded Covid will pounce from the shadows and strike everyone in the room dead)

AmyMutts
AmyMutts
5 years ago
Reply to  smithey

It truly was absurd! The woman looked like she had a Hitler moustache since her folded square was black.

Waffle
Waffle
5 years ago

Unfortunately my mother in law is one of these. She will not leave the house unless absolutely necessary nor will she let anyone into the house either. Any letters, parcels, groceries or cash that she comes into contact must be sanitised before it comes into the house or her possession. Despite being fully jabbed she is still absolutely petrified of coming into contact with others ‘just in case’. Any time we visit we have to talk through a window at a two meter distance either side. My partner is concerned that she’s developed some kind of mental illness due to her increasingly erratic behaviour. We’ve tried to get the siblings involved but unfortunately they don’t visit as often and as such don’t seem to think there is an issue.

smithey
smithey
5 years ago
Reply to  Waffle

Such people do not see the irony that they might as well be dead rather than live a life like that. Has to be said though it is her free choice, if she wants to live like that then let her, but these people should not force their chosen way of life on the rest of us.

Hester
Hester
5 years ago

This Government polls for one thing its not because they want to know what people think its a ruse to plant in the mind of the people the things that are coming down the track, such that people believe they have voted for them its one of the Governments psyops tools from their box of many tricks, Why ask these questions? If you are going to open up why ask? The Government wants to shut down night clubs it means less people on the streets at night, so less need for police, they want to keep masks because it is a symbol of obedience, as long as people wear these things they the Government know they are still very much in control, Travel quarantine, helps them hit their eco targets, keeps the money in the country, also keeps their boots on our necks/
Yougov was built by Nadim Zahawi, he no longer has a financial stake in it I understand but come on he still has plenty of influence and he is the master of vaccines, so go figure.
The solution to the concerns raised by the eternally worried are
Wear your mask, stay indoors after 10, dont go abroad,… Read more »

enlighteneduk
enlighteneduk
5 years ago

Seeing many of the comments on the Facebook GB News group when a question was asked as to whether members would continue to wear masks, social dustance etc , the numbers saying they would, astonished me. Likewise other polls on people’s own timelines, revealed that many will continue to do so. What a nation of namby pambies we’ve become. I’m ashamed to be British.

Hester
Hester
5 years ago
Reply to  enlighteneduk

I don’t believe them I don’t know anyone who wants to keep masks and distance and isolate relatives.

Nobody2021
Nobody2021
5 years ago

“Would you want to be strung up by the balls to save the world from extinction?”

Breaking: Polls suggests that 60% of men would like to be strung up by the balls.

Covidonian
Covidonian
5 years ago

Re intelligence and fear. I have lost account of the number of educated friends(many with masters and PHD ‘s ) who share corona fear memes with me. I robustly respond with the context they never get. They usually go quiet. As a critical behavioural researcher i would say that polls when people have been fear primed and no context is given are designed to keep the fear going.

Epi
Epi
5 years ago

I took part in that survey and the questions are loaded.

Brian Robins
Brian Robins
5 years ago

Surely no one takes notice of YouGov polls anymore since it is well established that they are manipulated?

chaos
chaos
5 years ago

YouGov was created by slime experimental gene therapy sorry vaccine minister Nadhim Zahawi. It is niow run by his wife. He swindled expenses years ago for heating for his stables, including underfloor heationg for his horses.

IanC
IanC
5 years ago

I don’t believe polls, does anyone with a functioning brain? But looking around and listening to previously, sensible friends, acquaintances, and colleagues I wouldn’t be surprised if these numbers are on the low side.
Let the (sorry, I’m going back to the old favorite) ‘Bedwetters’ continue with every restriction they think will save them from the Wiley demon phantom killer COVID by all means.
Stay home you halfwits! You’ll be safe there under your duvets or behind the sofa, bottom lips quivering. Leave us out of your paranoia. We’ll keep everything afloat out here for you.
Us Independent Freethinking Old Variant Humans can carry on as we have done for millennia.
It might actually be quite pleasant sans the new variant human, Homo-Bovinus.
There really is no need for legislation or Government Diktat Guidance.
The statistics would soon change if the relentless MSM / Government terrorism and propaganda campaigns could somehow be stopped.
I’m getting bloody tired of these twats.
DR Mike Yeadon has a new (I think it’s new) video out. Definitely worth a watch if you haven’t already, and you’ve got 45minutes or so to spare. Do try to share as widely as possible.
It’s good stuff, as… Read more »

chas cowie
chas cowie
5 years ago

The trouble with the polling companies is that their questions are designed to get the answers they want. I answer the YouGov polls simply to try and add some balance to their numbers and there are always questions that do not allow a reasonable answer. The trouble is people like the fat lard tub take the answers as gospel.

Shirespeed
Shirespeed
5 years ago

19%, 35%, 40% of Brits show themselves to be utter morons, with zero understanding of viruses, vaccines, epidemiology and indeed zero common sense.
When you look at those around you who you are forced to interact with, none of this comes as a surprise.

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