Britain is in quarantine. A national emergency demands a national response
Sir Keir Starmer responds to Boris Johnson.
Britain is suddenly the global centre of attention, for all the wrong reasons. The rapidly spreading mutant strain of Covid, first identified in Kent, has caused our European neighbours to close their borders by land, sea and air. Boris Johnson’s Friday evening broadcast that the new strain had necessitated Tier 4 measures in London and the South East, cancelling the Christmas break, appears to have unleashed panic abroad. Over the last 48 hours, the UK has in effect been quarantined.
Those who warned that Brexit would cut this country off from Europe may now find their direst prophecies fulfilled — but for reasons of prophylaxis rather than politics. It is absurd for Nigel Farage to accuse the French of seeking to exploit the new coronavirus strain to force the British hand on post-Brexit trade. In their shoes, would our politicians have acted differently? For the moment, in any case, there won’t be any trade. Nobody is allowed out and nobody will want to come in. For the foreseeable future, we are on our own.
This is not the time to indulge in our favourite national pastime: the blame game. The emergence of this virulent mutation here — if that does indeed prove to be what has happened — is more akin to a natural disaster than to a political decision, such as declaring war or leaving the EU. The focus now should not be on finding fault or on hindsight, but on how the nation can pull together to face the blockade.
The Government must start preparations for rationing some food and medical supplies immediately. Even if there is no panic buying in the shops and supermarkets, it makes sense to husband our resources until new ways of importing goods in a controlled environment can be improvised. Only the oldest generation of citizens alive today can even remember rationing, so the civil service will have to extend the measures already prepared for a hard Brexit to cover the whole gamut of imports. Mistakes will be made, as they were in the rationing regimes of both world wars, but we will pull through.
A massive new effort will also be required to deal with a pandemic that, as Matt Hancock admits, is now “out of control”. Cases rose by 52 per cent in the last week to 35,928 a day; deaths are a lagging indicator but they too are rising fast. The NHS will need all the new capacity that was built up during the first wave. But that will, almost certainly, be insufficient if hospitals are not to be overwhelmed. The threat posed by mutant Covid comes at the worst possible time of year, when the health service is stretched even in normal times. The advice to treat everybody as a potential carrier of the new variant is borne out by figures that show more than 60 per cent of those diagnosed with Covid in London already have the mutant strain. If it is too late to prevent the new coronavirus spreading across the country, we can at least hope to delay that spread to enable the NHS to prepare.
A big new effort will now be required from our scientific community, which has already worked miracles this year. Ironically, we are in the best position to become the world’s experts on this and indeed other mutations of Covid-19. The new strain has already been detected in several countries and it may prove to have been much more widespread than was realised. The original strain of Covid is now known to have circulated in Italy more than a year ago, having presumably spread there via Chinese guest workers. New mutations are appearing spontaneously and this one won’t be the last. We may also have to fall back on our own vaccine, created at Oxford and manufactured by AstraZeneca, if supplies of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine are interrupted. The MHRA should authorise the Oxford vaccine as soon as it is safe to do so and the vaccination programme will need to be stepped up.
Mutant Covid threatens to make what was already the worst emergency in most of our lifetimes very much worse. Leadership in which the whole country can have confidence will obviously be more important than ever before. The Prime Minister should invite the Leader of the Opposition to hold urgent talks without delay. Everything should be on the table, including the formation of a National Government, with Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister respectively. Whether he joins a coalition or not, Sir Keir’s experience as DPP could be put to good use in enforcing the new rules, reassuring the public and preventing disorder.
The politician who has emerged from the Covid crisis with by far the most credit so far is Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It might make sense to expand his role to command, control and coordinate the overall strategy, Michael Gove, who is already in charge of preparations for a no-deal Brexit, should also be given a greatly enhanced interdepartmental brief to deal with the bloackade of our borders. The Foreign Office should be working round the clock to repair the damage to the UK’s international standing and restore normal relations with our neighbours. And the Ministry of Defence will play a much larger role in ensuring continuity of supplies.
The whole country will now need to be put on an emergency footing, with new and more onerous restrictions on work, travel and education. Morale, already at a low ebb, must be maintained. At such a time, the cultural, arts and entertainment industries will be more needed than ever before. Hospitals will need the help of the hospitality industry, too. Many more fields for cooperation and synergy can surely be found across public and private life.
A national emergency of this magnitude demands a national response. The media have a vital role too — but not to undermine the state. Criticism is necessary as long as it is constructive. The most useful service that journalists can perform is maintain the accuracy of information to the public and counteract the rumours and conspiracy theories that inevitably circulate.
Britain will not be ruined by this latest phase of the crisis. As Adam Smith said, there is a deal of ruin in a nation. We shall not be destroyed either by the pandemic or its consequences. But this is the moment of maximum danger. The country expects that every man and woman will do their duty. And the first duty of a patriot is not to panic.
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