IT is “not a neat division”, as Professor Jason Leitch put it. The National Clinical Director failed to get a mention in the Queen’s Birthday Honours overnight, but a gong for services to understatement must surely come his way soon.

The difference between what is a cafe and what is a restaurant hadn’t previously animated Scottish politics, but it certainly did this week as part of the new coronavirus restrictions.

With record numbers testing positive and death on the march, you might think it a wholly peripheral debate. But it came alive because of a range of factors, including job fears, flighty policy making, and an anguished backlash from business.

Most importantly, it is a straw in the wind at the start of a long winter.

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To recap, on Wednesday, Nicola Sturgeon announced the latest phase in a creeping return to lockdown in a bid to curb rising transmissions.

Hospitality bore the brunt of it.

In the five central health boards with the most cases - Greater Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Ayrshire, Lothian and Forth Valley, home to 3.4m of Scotland’s 5.4m population - she said pubs, bars, restaurants and licensed cafes would shut down from 6pm on Friday for 16 days.

Outside the central belt, venues got a 6pm curfew for serving food and soft drinks indoors and can only serve alcohol outdoors, but to 10pm.

Initially, the central belt rules covered “all licensed premises” except hotels. Only “cafes that do not have an alcohol licence will be able to stay open until 6pm to prevent social isolation,” the First Minister said.

The presence of booze conferred the black spot as it made people “disinhibited” and physical distancing “more difficult”, she explained.

But then the rules changed before they’d even taken effect. After it was pointed out they would close central belt tea-and-scone cafes which kept an alcohol licence for the odd bottle of beer, Ms Sturgeon returned to Holyrood the next day with a reprieve.

They could open after all “whether they are licensed or unlicensed, as long as they do not serve alcohol”. Regulations were promised for Friday, with council environmental health officers (EHOs) ensuring compliance.

And this is where it got messy. Until now, there has been no differentiation between cafes, restaurants, bistros, tapas joints and sushi bars in the coronavirus regulations. Nor is there any difference in planning law.

Since 1997 all these premises have been grouped in the same class as “use for the sale of food or drink for consumption on the premises”.

According to Scottish Government guidance, this broad category was designed to reflect “the breaking down of the traditional boundaries between different types of premises”.

Hence the debate over where a cafe ends and a restaurant begins. If the same rules usually apply to both, why not let restaurants stay open in the central belt as well as cafes? Could they even, in law, be told apart?

The Government’s solution - signed off just six hours before coming into force last night - was a new definition of a cafe as somewhere mostly selling “non-alcoholic drinks, snacks or light meals” which may be eaten on site.

Which, as anyone who saw the FM grow increasingly exasperated in yesterday’s daily briefing will know, did not drawn a line under the matter.

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Some premises serve light meals by day, like a cafe, then fancier meals at night, like a restaurant. Which menu defines them and determines if they can stay open? Some cafes serve all-day fry-ups. Are those “light meals”, especially when set next to the bite-size offerings in a tapas bar?

Ms Sturgeon acknowledged a “lack of clarity”, but said that was “the price we have to pay” for flexibility.

As the questions kept coming, she said if cafe/restaurant owners were in doubt “they should close”, pending a verdict from an EHO.

Privately, councils doubt EHOs will be rushing to pass judgment.

At times, the briefing was surreal. Ms Sturgeon got into a riff about Jaffa Cakes. At other times muddled. “Clarity is easy, but it’s hard,” she said towards the end. “And maybe in some respects we’re got to be harder so we can be clearer.” She also wondered out loud if it might have been better just to shut all the cafes and be done with it. And No, it was not a shambles, she insisted, despite the air of someone good and shambled.

It was a scrappy affair. You may also say it was about one, temporary issue on the margins of most people’s lives. But I think it deserves a harder look.

The confusion arose because the Government tried to retro-fit its own rules with an exemption that had no grounding in existing law. It had to create a new definition, and as Ms Sturgeon said, it’s not perfect.

In truth, it may not even be adequate. There was also a shoddy lack of consultation with business.

These may prove small things if the rules lapse on schedule. But that depends on Covid. They could be extended, geographically or in time.

Businesses need a system that is sound wherever and however long it applies. Rules rooted in clearly understood existing laws are therefore better than ones which rely on vague new definitions and the many-splendored views of council officials.

We have come a long way since the first lockdown in March. Compliance is still high, but push-back is growing.

Half-baked changes that feed anger and weaken trust are a menace. New rules must be copper-bottomed.

That means taking a lot more care than in this case. Flexibility and clarity are not mutually exclusive.

As winter gets ever grimmer, the Government needs to up its game.