The politics of the pandemic may divide us, but we are all in the same boat

United we stand tall, divided we fall victim. This second wave of Covid-19 is polarising the nation far more than the first. Young and old, healthy and frail, rich and poor: the differences in our experience of the crisis are increasingly obvious — and so is the bitterness bred by these differences. Half the country cannot wait to hunker down, raise the drawbridge and hibernate for the winter. The other half dreads lockdown like — no, more than — the plague.

Not surprisingly, these contrasts are reflected in the politics of pandemic. In the Left corner, we have Sir Keir Starmer calling for an immediate national lockdown. True, he has plenty of facts and figures to bolster his arguments, though people are much less inclined to trust politicians who invoke “the science” now than they were last spring. Sage is no longer the last word in sagacity. But Sir Keir seems to take an almost sadistic satisfaction in demanding his “circuit breaker” — even though nobody can say when the circuits would be restored. One might be forgiven for questioning whether Sir Keir — a well-heeled London lawyer and former Director of Public Prosecutions — has any personal experience of what it is like to lose everything you have. And why should he? Last March, hardly anyone knew who Starmer was and the Labour Party was out of sight in the polls. Sir Keir looks like a man who has had a good pandemic.

Yet the cost of a second national lockdown is likely to be greater than the first — and this time, the Exchequer is empty. Nobody is more aware of this than the man in charge of the public purse. Like Keir Starmer, but for opposite reasons, Rishi Sunak is one of the few political figures to have grown in stature as a direct result of coronavirus. He is reported to be the most powerful voice in Cabinet pleading the case for a more piecemeal approach to the second wave. The Chancellor has no choice but to listen to the millions who will lose their jobs and businesses if the country is closed down again. It is his job to keep reminding Cabinet that the cure could be worse than the disease. The wisest counsel in medicine is that of the Hippocratic oath: first, do no harm.  

Sunak’s strongest argument is actually a humanitarian one. If the Government shuts down the economy, who will pay for the NHS? The public service that the public relies on most is also, of course, by far the most expensive. And the only hope of better days to come lies in the holy grail of a vaccine. We cannot afford not to afford these things — and so we cannot afford to go broke.  

According to sources close to London’s hitherto largely invisible Mayor, Sadiq Khan, the capital now stands on the brink of moving to the “high” Tier 2, which means a limited local lockdown of the kind to which several other cities are already subject. Manchester’s much more vociferous Mayor, Andy Burnham, is backing his Labour colleague Keir Starmer’s call for a nationwide rather than a local lockdown. None of these municipal leaders wants to take the blame for killing the geese that lay the golden eggs. They do want to take a leaf out of the Boris Johnson book: their policy on cake is pro having it and pro eating it.

The Prime Minister himself is trying to play the honest broker, balancing the competing interests of Labour maximalists and Tory minimalists — but in vain. If he ever raises his sights to allow a glimpse across the Channel, he will see that our “friends in Europe” are also having a tough time. The two countries that are driving the hardest bargain on fishing rights — the issue that still threatens a no-deal Brexit — are France and Spain.

As it happens, both Paris and Madrid are now living under local lockdowns, with restrictions on travel and socialising that are similar to those which may soon be imposed on London. And in both cases, the debate has been politicised to an even greater extent than in Britain. In Spain, the Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez is trying to blame the municipality of Madrid, controlled by the centre-Right, for refusing to impose a stricter lockdown. In France, President Macron has jettisoned his “l’état, c’est moi” manner and is instead reinventing himself as sympatique. It does not help his new image that he has been outed as hopelessly unpunctual: apparently his excuse is to tell people that he is never late, “because nothing can start until I am there”. This is worthy of Louis XIV.

Back here, Boris Johnson has talked the tough talk, but thus far he is doing his best to avoid walking the walk. Instead, he has followed the “middle way” associated with the predecessor he increasingly resembles: Harold Macmillan. Time will tell whether Boris’s via media will survive the world’s most vicious media. All we can say is that, across the country, across Europe and even across the world, nobody is exempt from the curse of Covid.

One observer has somehow found the Archimedean point from which to contemplate the globe — and maybe even nudge it in a cosmopolitan direction. Ivan Krastev is a Vienna-based Bulgarian academic bold enough to have already written a book, Is It Tomorrow Yet? about the “paradoxes of the pandemic” (Allen Lane, £10). In just 80 pages of crisp prose, Krastev summarises the ways in which Covid-19 has turned our mental as well as physical world upside down. He reinforces the point that we have not all been equally affected either by the virus or by the measures taken against it. The loss of our liberties, especially the freedom to travel, is felt differently by those who never had the means to enjoy them.

Yet Krastev’s conclusion is optimistic: “For perhaps the first time in history, people around the world are having the same conversations and sharing the same fears,” he writes. “It might only be for this weird moment in our history, but we cannot deny that we are currently experiencing what it feels like to live in One World.” As we sit glued to our screens, it is hard to argue with that. So when we rage against our uninspiring leaders or our unneighbourly neighbours, we should remember that, even if it doesn’t feel like it, we are all ultimately in the same boat.