Can you remember what you were doing two years ago? Can you recall how you felt?

I can.

Two years ago our world changed, probably for ever as we went into the first Covid lockdown.

We were furloughed and home schooling our kids. Working from home became a thing, exercising outdoors was a rare and strictly-controlled delight and should you happen to come across someone in the street who happened to be taking their permitted ‘stroll’ you gave them a very wide berth.

And people died. Tens of thousands of them.

Front line workers were disproportionately affected and health staff – with inadequate PPE – suffered particularly badly.

But the strict and necessary lockdown regulations also had other effects. You couldn’t visit relatives in hospital or care homes and there were tragic stories of people having to say their last goodbyes to dying mums over Zoom or watch their funerals on an iPad.

And people died.

Sometimes the number of deaths crept up, sometimes they increased at an alarming rate but as a country, we were committed to doing whatever we could to help. We obeyed the rules because it was the right thing to do. It was our contribution in an attempt to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe while the scientists worked to find a vaccine.

Sometimes the lockdowns came too late. Sometimes the lockdowns were lifted too early. Then we had vaccines, then we had variants capable of ‘vaccine escape’.

And we all became experts on the Greek alphabet as the Delta variant wrought havoc.

And people died.

Then along came Omicron. It’s not as deadly as Delta, it was gleefully announced, but is much more transmissible. Now we have Omicron BA.2 and that’s even more transmissible.

People are still dying because of the pandemic. According to the government’s own website, last week there were 814 deaths in the UK where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate. In total, deaths attributable wholly or partly to Covid stand at more than 185,000.

I could go on a rant about the government lifting all coronavirus health protections but I won’t. I could get angry about how those who are clinically vulnerable have been left exposed and become virtual prisoners in their own homes because there is absolutely no way of protecting themselves other than keeping away from everyone else.

I could express my dismay at the ending of self-isolation for people testing positive for Covid or ask how people are meant to be careful when free lateral flow testing is being stopped.

No, all I’m asking people to do is to remember just how bad things have been at times over the past two years. I want people to recall the extraordinary lengths we as a nation went to. We didn’t see loved ones because it was the right thing to do. Christmases were spent on our own. Birthdays and anniversaries came and went without celebration. Grandchildren went unhugged.

But some of us – a tiny minority – didn’t play by the rules and the punishments were harsh and swift. Students holding a house party were hit with £10,000 fines. Two friends going for a socially distanced walk in the Peak District were arrested because they had taken drinks with them. Self-employed hairdressers were raided, fined and closed down.

For those caught breaking the rules, it was a serious matter.

So then, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jacob Rees-Mogg, the minister of state for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, who has now decided that Covid lockdown law-breaking is ‘fluff’ and ‘fundamentally trivial’. 

Of course, it’s only trivial when it applies to his chums, not to us ordinary people.

When he was asked about the ‘partygate’ controversy, he said at the Conservative Party spring conference: "All of that is shown up [by the war in Ukraine] for the disproportionate fluff of politics that it was, rather than something of fundamental seriousness... it's fundamentally trivial.”

Really, Mr Rees-Mogg?

Tell that to those people who had to say their last goodbyes to a dying relative over Zoom or those who couldn’t go to a loved one’s funeral because of lockdown restrictions, while in No10 the prosecco flowed, a DJ played some banging tunes and a minion was sent to the supermarket to fill a suitcase with booze.

I wonder if those who found themselves having to cough up a £10,000 fine think it’s fundamentally trivial. I wonder if they think one law for the high and mighty and another for the little people is political ‘fluff’. I suspect not.

This has got nothing to do with political point-scoring and everything to do with basic right and wrong.

We have an absolute right to expect those who make the rules to follow the rules themselves. That’s not fundamentally trivial, it’s just about the least we can expect.