Baroness Fox, one of the peers calling for a campaign to rid the country of Covid-era warnings, said: “During the pandemic we were faced with an endless series of patronising, condescending and ultimately draconian messages in every public space.
“It’s like a nightmare to remember it, but actually it’s very hard to forget it because in many public spaces those messages prevail.
“The reluctance to remove all signs of that shameful episode indicates we have not quite got to grips with how disastrous it was for society. I want us to scrap all of them.”
Sammy Wilson, the DUP MP and vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on pandemic response and recovery, said: “I’m more than happy to give support to getting rid of the vestiges of lockdown, and also to have them all put in a museum to show the futility and madness that overtook us during Covid.”
Prof Sikora, Prof Gupta and Prof David Livermore, a microbiologist who cautioned against excessive restrictions during the pandemic, are all backing calls for the Government to mandate the removal of Covid warning signs.
Prof Gupta said: “I would almost rather we held on to some of these, or put them in a museum, as a monument to the absurdity of the situation – to remind us of the lack of logic that prevailed during that period.”
‘Scoundrels and zealots’
Prof Livermore also suggested that a museum could be put together, quipping that it could be called the “museum of Covid futility, failures and – as with vaccine passports – petty fascism”.
“The signs remind us of the scoundrels and zealots who imposed such rules on us, causing so much collateral damage – debt, wasted years and wrecked educations, old folks who died alone,” he said.
Dr Alan Mendoza, executive director of the Henry Jackson Society, said the troubling persistence of the signs showed Britain had “lost national pride”.
“As central government was responsible for these restriction signs in the first place, it could now mandate their removal in a similar way to ensure clarity in this regard,” he said.