If there’s one person you can always trust to bring even more confusion to a confused situation, Boris Johnson is your man. Rest assured that if a situation exists which has you scratching your head, he’ll have you scratching your whole body by the time he’s finished talking.

Yesterday, the Government finally confirmed what everyone has known for weeks – that lockdown restrictions for England are being removed almost entirely from next week. This means nightclubs can open once again – but there’s been little word on whether they’d have to request proof of a Covid vaccine or negative result in order to gain entry.

A few weeks ago, the London Evening Standard published a story that was breathlessly followed by the dance music press. My take at the time can be found here. According to reports, government minister Michael Gove had said there would not be a need for nightclubs to enforce such rules.

But yesterday, it transpired the government was recommending that they did! They “encouraged” nightclubs to do this, but didn’t make it a legal requirement. So if an outbreak appears in an area and it’s traced back to a club, that club will be told “well, you should have put such checks in place”.

Nightclubs will be blamed for allowing the virus to spread amongst young, unvaccinated people. Short term, bad press will follow – and the useless dance music press is in a poor position for the defence. Long term, when licence applications come up, councils will have yet more reasons to say no to renewal. Hence more clubs closed.

You see how nightclubs are being lined up to take the blame yet? It’s getting clearer by the day…