Evening Standard comment: Let’s stay civilised when Super Saturday arrives | Goodbye to quarantine | Prince Andrew’s duty

Has lockdown changed us for the better or for the worse?

On the one hand it revealed a London that is compassionate and community-minded: clapping for carers, and volunteering to help vulnerable neighbours. (Who didn’t love our quiet, car-free streets and easy cycling?) On the other, it has unleashed a spate of loud, drunken, antisocial behaviour.

In recent weeks the city’s parks have been covered with litter, much social distancing advice chucked out the window.

The question may be settled as soon as tomorrow’s “Super Saturday” when pubs, restaurants and other establishments open for socially-distanced service. That will be a reward for months of abstemiousness in lockdown.

It will also be an opportunity for irresponsible behaviour that could undo that good work by triggering a second spike. Londoners should not throw it all away. There is a fragile truce with the virus right now with our economy and many businesses hanging in the balance.

Of course people want to celebrate, although plenty are planning to take it easy.

According to one poll, fewer than one in 10 people plan to go to a pub or restaurant this weekend. Only around half of sites across London are expected to return to trading on their first day.

Even so, it only takes a single superspreader event to send infections up again. In February a South Korean churchgoer infected 43 others; in Washington, a month later, a singer gave the virus to 53 people at choir practice.

It is worrying, then, that some Londoners are apparently planning huge raves this weekend.

The risks of such events are clear. Coronavirus is no less dangerous than it was when lockdown began in March.

The police and A&E departments have little capacity to deal with drunken revellers. A second spike means a second lockdown, which would be disastrous for the businesses that have limped through the first one.

Restaurants and pubs have worked hard to find inventive ways to reopen safely. On Saturday customers should treat them with respect. And keep that community spirit booming.

Goodbye to quarantine

The announcement today that people arriving from a long list of countries, including Spain, Italy and France, will no longer have to isolate for two weeks, marks the inevitable end of the Government’s damaging, deeply misconceived blanket quarantine policy.

Instead, a new “traffic light” system means only those coming from countries (like the US) deemed to have a “red” level of infection will face quarantine, with everyone else free to come here without restriction.

That’s as it should be, because as the Evening Standard said from the start, there was no logic to rules which until today treated people arriving from countries less risky than our own as somehow more dangerous.

It was nonsense, and it’s right that it’s been ditched for a more selective approach based on scientific evidence. Thousands of jobs have been lost or imperilled in airines, travel companies, hotels, and other businesses, many in London, that rely on tourists.

Today’s U-turn will be too late to repair much of the harm that has been inflicted on them. We say good riddance.

Prince Andrew’s duty

The charges brought against Ghislaine Maxwell in the US over her alleged role in grooming girls for the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein have focused more unwelcome attention on the pair’s one-time friend Prince Andrew.

Sources insist that he’s tried to co-operate with US prosecutors, but the prosecutors say otherwise and one of the lawyers for Epstein’s victims today called on Andrew to “be a man” and tell all he knows.

He must find a way to do so. Epstein’s victims suffered dreadfully and serious allegations remain.

The prince says he’s done nothing wrong but nonetheless owes it to them to testify fully and frankly.

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