Fit-again Johnson’s premiership in make-or-break period

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has returned to his post — after a three-week coronavirus-enforced absence — to make the toughest decisions of his premiership. While Johnson has much goodwill from the nation following his brush with death and the birth of his son this week, the government is losing public support and he must very quickly make big calls on whether to ease the UK lockdown, given that other European countries are now easing restrictions.

The latest major EU country to announce its “exit plan” was France, which on Tuesday gave a detailed road map for gradual reopening from May 11. This adds to recent announcements by other key European nations, including Germany, Italy and Spain, which are all planning to progressively open up their economies in May.

However, the challenge Johnson has compared to some continental counterparts is that UK infection rates are still higher by comparison, and the nation’s overall death toll is on course to be the highest in Europe. This will, ultimately, lead to searching questions being asked about the UK’s response compared to other countries, especially Germany, and makes the PM’s decisionmaking process trickier. Johnson said on Monday that his uppermost concern was avoiding a second significant wave of infections before a vaccine can be found.

Before Johnson was struck down with the virus in March, he and the government were riding high in the polls and were being given the benefit of the doubt over their early handling of the outbreak. This was despite public concerns about issues such as limited reserves of personal protective equipment (PPE) for front-line health care workers, and also the slow start on testing the government made in March and April.

A March poll from Ipsos MORI found that 49 percent of respondents thought the government was tackling the crisis well, while only 35 percent believed it was handling it badly. Fast forward a month and public confidence in the government’s ability to handle the exceptionally complex situation has fallen significantly, with confidence in ministers’ decisions falling 6 percent in just one week, according to an Opinium poll on Sunday. Drilling down to the testing issue in particular, only 15 percent now believe the government is handling this well, with some 57 percent disapproving. We are now several weeks into the crisis and only about 20,000 to 30,000 tests are taking place in the UK each day, even though Johnson indicated last month that the target was about 10 times that amount. Testing and PPE issues aside, however, the central decision that Johnson now faces is how far, if at all, he can go in lifting the lockdown restrictions, while avoiding a second major wave of infections. Although the daily death rate is now plateauing, many scientists assert that the rate of UK infections is still too high to warrant any big easing up on restrictions, and Johnson said on Monday that he thought it was still too soon to ease the lockdown at this stage.

The daily rate of new infections peaked earlier this month with 5,903 cases, and on Saturday it stood at 3,583. But multiple scientists say that it would be best to get the numbers down to a few hundred new cases per day before any comprehensive easing of restrictions is initiated — otherwise the newly enhanced contact tracing and testing system currently being prepared for launch by the government could be overwhelmed.

With UK politics continuing to be framed by the pandemic, another reason the government is now on the back foot is that ministers are increasingly being held to account in Westminster. This is not just by a rejuvenated opposition Labour Party under new leader Keir Starmer, but also from MPs across the political spectrum now that Parliament has returned to session after the Easter recess. The Cabinet is under growing pressure from legislators, including some backbench MPs from the ruling Conservatives, who are keen to see the government move faster to rejuvenate the economy. These Tory MPs are lobbying ministers amid what one of the Bank of England’s top policymakers, Jan Vlieghe, warned last week was already the sharpest shock to the UK economy in several hundred years. The impact is so profound because the virus has created both a supply shock (because people can’t work) and a demand shock (because normal consumption patterns are disrupted). The good news is that Vlieghe believes the economy could, in principle, return to roughly its pre-virus trajectory once the pandemic is over. However, this future growth will be stifled by a massive surge in borrowing to cover the cost of the pandemic. In this context, several economic forecasters have warned that the economy may not return to its pre-pandemic size for years. The

EY ITEM Club think tank said last week that UK gross domestic product may shrink by 13 percent during the second quarter of 2020, with a 6.8 percent overall contraction for the year. However, even after pencilling in a recovery for the second half of the year and growth in 2021, the economy may not return to its late-2019 state until 2023.

Despite this gloomy data, the political mood music from Downing Street has remained very cautious about any substantial easing of restrictions in May, and this was reinforced by Johnson on Monday. Senior ministers are concerned about the potential for a second wave of infections, as has happened in some Asian countries.

If the government does continue to proceed with such caution in the coming days, it will have to address growing calls for a more detailed road map for the coming months. The ministers in London are in a tight spot here following the release last week of the detailed thinking on these issues from the Scottish administration and its Welsh counterpart, underlining that it appears increasingly possible that England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland could all adopt different timelines and approaches.

As other key European countries begin easing their lockdowns, Johnson has returned to Downing Street for what could easily prove to be another make-or-break period for his prime ministership. With the pandemic still having the potential to reshape UK politics, let alone international relations more generally, Johnson could be the big beneficiary if he gets the decisions right — or a major loser if public confidence in the government drains further.