Why is Boris so cautious about lifting the lockdown? Ask Angela
Photo: Michael Kappeler/dpa-pool/dpa
Fatherhood always changes your life and Boris Johnson is no exception. Hard on the heels of his near-death experience, he is now experiencing the rush of emotion that follows the birth of a child. He and his fiancée Carrie Symonds will feel intensely protective of their little son. This is not a Prime Minister who will readily take risks with the lives of other people, either.
Meanwhile, the British lockdown debate is more intense than ever. In one camp are those pressing for an immediate lifting of at least the more onerous social distancing restrictions. These are variously known as “lockdown sceptics”, “hawks” and “economy-firsters”. In the other camp is — everyone else.
The sceptics make a great deal of noise in the media, especially on Twitter, and they have influence in Government, too. The business lobby is pressing for a swift end to the lockdown and Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, is doubtless leading the charge in Cabinet to rescue what can be salvaged of the hardest-hit sectors of the economy: hospitality, tourism, retail and other services.
But the sceptics have failed to persuade two even more important groups: the scientists and the public. On this side of the Atlantic, at least, the scientific consensus is firmly in favour of easing the lockdown only when strict criteria have been met, encapsulated in the Government’s five tests. Sweden has been an outlier, but only up to a point. In the United States there has been more variation between the measures adopted by different states. There too, however, the states that have suffered the most deaths and have imposed the strictest lockdowns are also the most cautious about lifting them. Expert opinion insists that social distancing is crucial in driving down the reproduction rate (“the R” or R0) below 1 and keeping it there.
As for public opinion: in the UK, it is even more cautious than the scientists. A YouGov survey for the Times found that 28 per cent of those polled do not want the lockdown eased even if the five tests are met. The gradual changes followed elsewhere in Europe attract even less support. Just 22 per cent want more shops to open and only 11 per cent favour schools reopening. As for lifting the lockdown entirely, as the sceptics demand: just 4 per cent of the public agree.
No wonder Boris Johnson disappointed business and many of his own MPs with his comeback speech on the steps of Downing Street. He heard their cries of woe, he felt their pain, but he had cold comfort for them. Even as the insolvencies multiply and the country plunges deep into recession, the Prime Minister is sticking to his guns. For a free-market, Thatcherite Tory like him, shutting down the economy is a particularly hard course to defend. Yet Downing Street has played down expectations since his return: nothing will change before May 8 and the only adjustments in prospect are quite limited.
Why is Boris Johnson so cautious? For an answer, one need only glance across the North Sea, to the great success story of the pandemic: Germany. There the lockdown has been partially lifted in the past week, with some variations among the 16 federal states. A limited return to school is under way, some churches and small shops have reopened, while large shops are partly open for business and gatherings of up to 50 people are allowed.
Yet leading German scientists are already sounding the alarm. The Robert Koch Institute has warned that the R number has risen to about 1, meaning that a second peak is possible, even likely. Angela Merkel, herself a scientist, has urged fellow Germans to keep on social distancing or risk running out of intensive care beds in a matter of months. She is emphatic that she will not hesitate to reimpose the lockdown if the R creeps up any further.
“If we get to a point where each patient is infecting 1.1 people, then by October we will back at the limits of our health system… If we get to 1.2… then we will hit full capacity… by July. And if it’s 1.3, we hit full capacity… in June. So you can see how little room for manoeuvre we have.”
If this is how the leader of Europe’s strongest economy sees the situation, we can be sure that Boris Johnson is well aware that his own discretion is even more limited. Germany started with more spare capacity in its health system and a large pharmaceutical industry that enabled it to scale up testing more rapidly. With a smaller population, the UK has already suffered several times as many deaths. If Mrs Merkel and the Robert Koch scientists are right — and they are under intensive fire from the powerful German business lobby and other lockdown sceptics — then there will be no major reopening in the UK for several weeks at least. The British Government will wait until it is confident that the Germans are not risking a second wave of Covid-19 in the summer or autumn before following suit.
Even with the lockdown, Britain faces the grim prospect of exceeding France, Spain and Italy to suffer the highest death toll in Europe. The Government cannot risk a second peak later this year at any price. The British people would not forgive Boris Johnson if, in defiance of scientific and public opinion, he were to lift the lockdown and then be forced to reimpose it. Such a turn of events could provoke a political crisis worse than Brexit. Indeed, that would be an understatement. The Government might well fall and the Conservative Party would tear itself apart.
Boris Johnson is not going to squander his victory, his majority and his popularity by a premature political gamble. The great British lift-off must wait a little longer.
