So there you have it then, we can wave goodbye to Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives, the most successful piece of political messaging since ‘take back control’.

It’s time to move on, apparently, as the death toll from coronavirus in the UK breaks through the 30,000 barrier.

Despite that grim statistic, we now have to Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives.

Words and symbols matter and don’t forget that the people behind the government’s communications strategy are the same people behind Vote Leave. Who can forget that golden oldie: Give £350 a week to the NHS?

The point of stay home, protect the NHS, save lives was very clear. It was a simple, authoritarian instruction in a time of crisis. It was a set of government orders backed by sanctions and there was no doubt it was directed at you. You, as an individual, were being told what to. It conveyed the fact that the NHS was under threat and that lives were at stake, your lives and the lives of those around you but there was something you could do about it by staying home.

We were basically told to be frightened about the ‘unseen enemy’ of Covid-19.

And by and large it worked.

But now it looks like it worked a little bit too well. We were frightened, and a lot of us still are.

The virus is still out there and it’s still killing people.

So why change the message?

Well the government needs to get the economy going again. It needs people to return to work. It needs offices and factories to open. It needs commuters back on buses and trains, the very places we were warned were the equivalent of a Petri dish for cultivating the virus. So the government needs us to be less frightened.

But we’re still frightened, because we were told to be frightened and we all saw the news reports from inside intensive care units, we all saw the funerals that had to take place without mourners, we all saw people having to say goodbye to their loved ones over Facetime.

So how do you go about getting people to change their minds about their own personal health and safety?

You change the message and you change the locus of responsibility.

So the first thing you can do is give an off-the-record briefing to those national newspapers you know will support you that the lockdown will be ending and people will get back their ‘freedom’. (Freedom to shop at garden centres, freedom to use pub beer gardens, freedom to spread coronavirus and kill people with it.)

Oh, and make sure you time the anonymous leak so it hits the front pages just before the VE Day Bank Holiday.

Perfect, you can tie in the ending of lockdown ‘freedom’ with the little Englanders wrapping themselves in the flag celebrating our victory ‘over Europe’ as one newspaper put it.

So what did we get? We got street parties that paid little or no regard to social distancing, we got conga lines in the street that looked like a perfect demonstration of how to spread coronavirus in a straight line but we also got our ‘freedom’.

Of course, the government immediately rowed back saying it had no idea where the ‘freedom’ message came from – nothing to do with us Guv – and the papers had got carried away with themselves.

That’s an argument I would have believed if it was just one national newspaper chasing website clicks but there were just too many of them with the same ‘unnamed No10 source’.

So that brings us to Sunday. Now don’t forget we’ve all just had our taste of ‘freedom’ with our street parties and conga lines so does the government double down on the ‘stay home’ message like a stern father with a recalcitrant teenager?

No, we get a new message: Stay Alert, Control the Virus, Save Lives.

The first question I would ask is what do I stay alert about? And how do I go about staying alert? Do I have to drink lots of coffee?

As I said, stay alert about what? This slogan doesn’t tell me and it needs to.

My next question is exactly how do I go about controlling the virus? I have no means of doing that. I can hope to control my own health and that of the people I live with but that’s about the extent of my control.

The fact is, what the new messaging is doing is passing on responsibility for the coronavirus crisis from the government to you, the individual.

Stay home – a top down directive from a government in control.

Stay alert – the government saying sorry folks, this is your responsibility now.

Save the NHS – this will be the clear outcome from you obeying the first instruction

Control the virus – the government saying well we’ve done our bit and the NHS is safe so it’s up to you again.

I hope I’m wrong but this feels like we’re being set up for the inevitable second spike in coronavirus cases and subsequent deaths.

But when that happens, be assured it will be your fault for not staying alert and your failure to control the virus.