The decline and fall of British competence

Tony Benn wrote of Labour’s cause: “We are not just here to manage capitalism but to change society and to define its finer values.” It was an inadvertently revealing insight into the politics that have more recently propelled the party to electoral disaster, in its assumption that managing capitalism is something quite trivial. The record of Boris Johnson’s government since the election shows that, on the contrary, a reputation for simple managerial competence ought to be sought and prized, not merely ceded by the opposition. The failures of an administration where obsequiousness rather than ability is the criterion for cabinet office are legion.

The Tories won a big majority in December’s general election not by merit but by (for them) the happy accident of facing a useless opposition. Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign interview with Andrew Neil will forever stand as his political epitaph. His inability to grasp the moral import of the party’s anti-Semitism crisis, coupled with his breathtaking ignorance of public policy (he demonstrated, among much else, that he was unaware that gilt issuance is public borrowing), showed Corbyn as a frivolous chancer at best. And therein lay the opportunity for the most dysfunctional government since the 1930s. It has taken a historic crisis — the greatest public-health emergency for at least a generation, and possibly for more than a century — to show how speedily a country’s reputation for safety and seriousness can be lost.

In every field of policy, the government has debased public life, with the sole if important exception of the economy. Even that caveat is a fine judgment. Figures released last week showed that the economy contracted by 20.4 per cent in the second quarter, marking the deepest recession since comparable records began. Britain’s is the most precipitous economic contraction of any G7 economy. The sole reason I’d cut the government some slack on this issue is that economic weakness is a by-product, rather than an exemplar, of bad policy.

Britain was late going into lockdown. The draconian nature of the restrictions, with non-food shops and restaurants shut from 23 March, guaranteed that the downturn would be severe and that it would be concentrated in the second quarter. Other European economies, notably Spain and Italy, have suffered severely from Covid-19 infection rates but they locked down earlier. In the broadest sense, the policies pursued by Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, of supporting businesses while allowing public debt to rise have been correct. So is the winding down of the furlough scheme, given that the external shock of the coronavirus is proving to be enduring and some of the jobs that have been protected will no longer be viable in a new age of social distancing.

In other areas of policy, the government’s record is one of pure failure and in some of them disgrace. Let me count the ways.

The lockdown was not only late but patchy. The coronavirus spread through care homes early in the crisis, barely checked, in the absence of adequate protective equipment and a testing capability. The frontline defence of the public has been provided by NHS workers and staff of care homes, who faced a visa surcharge if they happened to be from overseas; public outcry forced the government to reverse the policy but the obloquy remains. The longer-term protection was intended to be provided by a contact-tracing system, a prototype for which has now been abandoned at vast expense.

The past week has provided the most definitive indictment of the government’s inability to either anticipate problems or rectify them. Despite warnings from experts that relying on an untried algorithm to generate A-level grades would produce numerous anomalies and injustices, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, declared there would be “no U-turn, no change”, and then reversed course. His vainglorious gormlessness has blighted the lives of numerous young people and demonstrated that cabinet office can be held by anyone, regardless of ability.

It is almost a cliché to recall Dean Acheson’s words, a year before its first attempt to join the institutions of Europe, that Britain since 1945 has lost an empire but not yet found a role. Most obviously, it has never come to terms with its status as a medium-sized power whose influence was magnified by being part of the European Union and is now diminished as a result of leaving it.

British exceptionalism, the notion that this country has a uniquely proud and successful history, has characterised the myths held by Brexiters throughout my adult lifetime. It’s not borne out by any record of achievement. The linchpin of Europe’s renaissance since 1945 has been Germany, with whom the United States has enjoyed a real “special relationship”, and its determination to anchor itself in the institutions of the liberal west.

Britain, predominantly monolingual and with an over-centralised state apparatus, has never come to terms with its diminished status and administrative amateurishness. The coronavirus crisis has exposed its failings. The retreat into isolationism will continue regardless, and with a guarantee of accompanying decline.