Johnson's Covid strategy is changing Britain for the worse
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In his Conservative Party conference speech yesterday, Boris Johnson depicted a go-getting country that is ready to build a “new Jerusalem” out of the wreckage left by Coronavirus. The prime minister likes to evoke images of the UK as a place powered by private enterprise and filled with people uniquely wedded to liberty.
Two weeks ago, he told the House of Commons that Britain’s Covid-19 caseload was higher than Italy or Germany, because “our country is a freedom loving country”, and not because our ability to test and trace the disease is inferior. By this logical inversion, the prime minister implied that our independent spirit was precisely the reason that his government must impose greater restrictions on our behaviour.
While the Italians, famed for their restraint and enthusiastic rule-taking obviously, have allowed football fans to return to stadiums and introduced 30 minute virus-testing to enable tourists to come to the country, the UK has forced pubs to shut early and a “circuit breaker” mini-lockdown is almost certainly on its way. While Germany allows crowds to mingle at concerts in order to study the effects of such activity, we tell couples they can’t have more than fifteen guests at their weddings, and threaten to use the army to police the public’s behaviour.
Despite all this, there’s little sign that the UK is in revolt over these measures.
Six grim months of pandemic have taught us that Britons’ appetite for freedom is not as voracious as Boris pretends. We’ve shown that we’re prepared to do as we’re told, so long as there is a rationale, however uncertain and unconvincing, dressed up in scientific language. That’s why the government can deprive us of our liberties so easily.
A recent poll by Ipsos Mori revealed that only 33 per cent of British people oppose a second lockdown, assuming the number of confirmed cases of coronavirus continues to rise. A mere 39 per cent will not back the government if it decides to close all schools. Less than a quarter say they’re not prepared to spend the winter without the consolation of restaurants, pubs and bars.
This docile attitude is extraordinary, half way through a potential calendar year of curtailed freedoms, with all the damage that entails to social relationships, education and the economy. It is almost unfathomable when you consider that the government’s own behavioural experts initially dismissed the idea that people would comply with prolonged restrictions.
Some commentators have said that France is experiencing a second wave of Covid. However, Le Monde reports that, in Paris, politicians have made muscular arguments for why the government should not “handicap economic and social life” again. The number of cases per 100,000 people in Belgium is nearly double that in the UK, but its government has scrapped draconian restrictions, like a “rule of five”, concluding they are either “not useful or untenable” over a longer period.
The Belgians’ argument addresses an important point. Though Boris Johnson has prepared us for six more months of curtailed liberties and hobbled livelihoods, there is no guarantee that the pandemic will be dealt with by March next year.
He has chosen a period that covers the winter season, when flu is at its most virulent and the NHS is under greatest pressure. However, nobody believes that the rules are intended solely to protect the health service any more.
It seems likely that, if the disease is still moving through the population, even if hospitalisations and deaths are low, pressure to maintain restrictions will remain, from health professionals at least, and perhaps from the public too. By then, we may have a vaccine that is safe and works well, but, equally, we may not.
There is no end in sight and there’s little point in pretending otherwise. We’re not hunkering down for a final push to overcome this virus. We’re wedded instead to a strategy that was introduced, in desperation, when next to nothing was known about this disease.
The problem, as I predicted in May, when the government first tried to coax us out of our homes and back to work, is that “lockdown” has become an ideology. What’s more, a lot of people have become comfortable with the changes that it’s meant for their lives.
Let’s face it, there are quite a few who have positively revelled in the extraordinary levels of state intervention that this crisis has required. This is their time. They want government money to continue flowing freely for as long as possible, and they will shout noisily when the taps are finally turned off.
Even they must know, though, that we cannot continue to be insulated indefinitely from the damage we’ve done to our economy. Not withstanding Rishi Sunak’s scheme to cushion workers, serious hardship is coming.
It seems that, in other parts of Europe, the plan is to manage the disease and protect the vulnerable, while allowing daily life to continue, at least for the time being. We’re better placed now to take that approach, because we understand who is threatened most by coronavirus, and the ways in which it is usually transmitted.
In the UK, by contrast, the government seems likely to keep ramping up restrictions, just to be seen to be acting. The prime minister is terrified that he will be accused again of doing too little too late. We’re told that, because cases are spiralling, deaths will inevitably follow, but positive tests increased throughout the summer and into Autumn, without a significant rise in the death-toll.
The economy matters, not least because it affects people’s health; just like our personal liberties matter, not least because they shape our society and the attitudes of its people. Boris may still prize the idea of a freedom loving nation, filled with indefatigable, independent minded Britons. But his government’s Covid strategy may have killed off that self-image for good.
