Toby Young was given his peerage for the wrong reason. He deserved elevation to the Lords for his creation of Lockdown Sceptics (as the Daily Sceptic was first known) alone. It was a beacon of sanity in a time when the entire world went mad, one of the few forums where dispassionate discussion about the virus could take place. As an early contributor to the site, I was particularly interested to read His Lordship’s speech commemorating the fifth anniversary of the imposition of lockdown. He cites three reasons why the government of the day committed the most humiliating “interference in personal liberty in the history of these islands” (as Lord Sumption put the matter): first, the desire to curry favour with the metropolitan elite; second, the desire to be seen to be doing something; third, the sheer joy of exercising power. These are all correct, but they miss three much more fundamental reasons.

The single most important reason for lockdown was fear. Both the vast majority of the public and politicians were deathly afraid. There was a collective micturition of such overwhelming volume that it would have taken genuine, principled and courageous leadership to resist. Alas, no such leadership existed on the front bench of the government of the day. The clergy, who might have stepped up to the plate, were as fear-struck as anyone. As a result, a sort of cowering mob rule took hold.

The second fundamental reason for lockdown was the fact that ‘combatting the virus’ was tremendous fun. It gave people a purpose in life that they had never enjoyed before. So many today work in pointless and therefore deeply unsatisfactory jobs. How many people have the satisfaction of seeing their handiwork produce anything worthwhile – anything to uplift the spirit, to ornament or beautify or vivify the world? Pitifully few. Here, suddenly, was a cause around which the entire population could unite, a cause that only the stupidest would resist and only the truly evil would deny. This was the blitz but without the bombs. How marvellous it was to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with neighbours one hadn’t spoken to for years to bang saucepans on a Wednesday evening to propitiate the gods of our wonderful self-sacrificing NHS. One thinks of the peoples of the Himalayas who, in times gone by – and perhaps even today in a few of the remotest areas – doing the same thing, beating their pans and wailing at every eclipse of sun or moon.

All this and not to mention a plethora of secondary benefits – the cruel delights of spying on, disapproving of and – best of all – reporting on one’s neighbours; the intense satisfaction so many took in the prevention of joy. No pub rowdiness, no larking in the schoolroom (remember when we were young how we used to have to keep silent in lessons: young people today just have no idea how to behave), none of your lounging around in parks or on the beach, no toddlers splashing around in puddles, no children running around and shouting. And the joy of masking! How safe it made us feel! How pleasing not to have to smile at anyone. The delightful thought that the full force of the law could be deployed against any of those worthless individuals who dared to resist.

The third reason for lockdown that Toby misses is that it was all for free. It provided the Holy Grail of contemporary conceptions of the Good Life. It was free in different but related senses. On the one hand, the government in its munificence tore up the economic rule book to run the largest bar tab in the history of the universe. But perhaps even more importantly, the whole exercise was entirely free of moral cost. This was not mere virtue signalling, this was actual virtue (supposedly) but with no actual effort required. It was ‘virtuous’ (but not hard) to stay at home. It was ‘virtuous’ (but not difficult) to stay two metres apart. It was ‘virtuous’ (but frankly a joy) to be paid for doing nothing much: no pesky children to teach, no discipline to maintain in the classroom, only the conscientious who might turn up online. Bliss!

In all this, what we see in the lockdown mania that swept the world is a contemporary expression of what theologians used to call enthusiasm – a word that literally means the possession of people by a divine spirit. In a religious setting, enthusiasm refers generally to groups of people who claim the special favour of a god who speaks to them directly through ecstasy.

Lockdown, it seems to me, had quite a religious character to it. This was the state attempting to fulfil a spiritual need – that need being reassurance in the face of anxiety. A people without either faith or (in its absence) calm and measured leadership would inevitably look to its secularised tutelary deity – the state – for guidance, protection and salvation. It is no surprise, then, that so many, sensing the state’s ultimate impotence, should have cried out for more and harder humiliation.

Alexander Norman is the author of Captain de Havilland’s Moth, Abacus, £25.