Charles Moore
Sunak has made the right gesture
When there is a crisis, all of us call on the Government to listen to what people need and help provide it. This is not necessarily a “statist” thing to do. If you believe in the state at all, you believe that its power to lead is most crucial in an emergency. Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak tried to exercise that power last night.
When we make these calls, we need to adopt a different tone from that of normal life. In good times, we feel free to moan loudly about anything, often impugning the motives of politicians as we do so. We do this, oddly, because the stakes are quite low. Paradoxically, we need to be less extreme when the stakes are very high.
Right now, they are very high indeed. We need to avoid the political equivalent of panic-buying – rushing wildly for dramatic solutions, grabbing whatever we think would suit ourselves, elbowing weaker fellowcitizens out of the way.
Just as ministers need to understand our worries, we need to understand theirs. Their normally self-serving motives are not so relevant in a real crisis. They have just as much interest as anyone in getting this right, and even less chance of survival if they get it wrong.
Ministers worry, obviously, about practicalities – supply chains, money, medicines. Slightly less obviously, they worry about their exact choice of words. They must tell the truth – though not always the whole truth – but it matters terribly how they tell it. With every single remark they make, they can upset the necessary balance between hope and fear. If we understand this delicacy, we shall be more restrained ourselves when they “mis-speak”.
Bearing all that in mind, I would say that this Government so far deserves the benefit of the doubt. Some will say that Boris Johnson tends to facile optimism. It is probably true that – like many people, particularly many men – he first approached the subject more from the “What’s all the fuss about?” end of the spectrum than from the “We’re all doomed!” one. But ask yourself, “Would I have felt better about the handling of Covid-19 if Theresa May had been prime minister?”…
Looking back at the Boris headlines over the past tumultuous 10 days, one finds a reasonable balance between the grave – “Many more families are going to lose loved ones” – and the hopeful – “12 weeks to turn the tide”. The Prime Minister has shown roughly the right deference to the experts who flank him at press conferences, and asserted with roughly the right emphasis his own role as leader.
Last night, he offered relief to millions on the verge of unemployment, but at the same time reminded us that “thousands of lives could be lost needlessly” if health advice was not followed. Again, a balance.
Although the Government’s reluctance to clamp down on everything all at once worried many, it did have the effect which a free society should always seek – voluntary buy-in. With little intervention by police, army or action of the courts, and little disorder, most people have decided to do what is asked of them.
It is much better if people do the right thing because they want to help than because they are made to do so at the point of a gun. It means they will feel empowered to go on helping. That is happening. The reality – both virtual and actual – is that the British are looking out for one another in this. “It’s on all of us,” as the Chancellor said yesterday. That “it”, of course, includes the enormous, but justified bill.
This public acquiescence is all the more remarkable if – as many allege – the Government got its earlier analysis of the disease wrong. It thought at first that it could manage the peak of the disease by delay, so that “herd immunity” could develop. Last weekend, confronted with the Italian example, it changed its mind, and switched to “suppress”. People noticed all right, but the remarkable thing was how little execration there was.
On Monday evening, Mr Johnson admitted, but played down, his change of strategy by telling the press that the experts had decided the virus had reached “the fast-growth part of the upward curve”. Fiercer measures were therefore needed, he said. Most people seemed to accept his change of tune without serious protest. That suggests that trust is quite high.
When this is all over (which as Boris rightly reminded us, it eventually will be), a study of the sequence of events may show that our Government made culpable errors here. I do not feel I can judge. Nor – more to the point – should people in general waste time doing so at this moment. It will be a matter for historians.
What is true, however, is that from the beginning of this week, the Government has finally “owned” the coronavirus crisis. It has decreed that the moral need to save as many lives as possible overrules our normal attitude to choice and to cost. It has moved from being a key player to putting itself fully in charge. So it cannot duck the responsibilities.
The first of these, of course, is medical. But the second, affecting more people than the first, is economic. If you shut down large parts of the economy, even mostly by nudge rather than by law, you are responsible for the consequences.
The coming crash and its consequent redundancies are quite unlike the collapse of hopelessly inefficient and unionised British car firms in the Seventies, or even the banking collapse of 2008. In both of those examples, the businesses affected were largely responsible for their own disasters. In the hospitality or travel sector in 2020, however, you could be the best pub or airline in the world and still get taken to the cleaners (if there are any cleaners still open) by circumstances virtually 100 per cent beyond your control. This is not a shake-out, but an act of God, an earthquake.
So what the affected businesses need is money now, and the element within the businesses which need the money most are the people they employ. It was a pity, I think, that the Chancellor began his rescue earlier this week with offers of easy loans. These will certainly help some businesses, but if your takings have suddenly slumped to zero, with no immediate prospect of respite, why would you be looking for more debt if you could avoid it? You want actual cash, and so do your workers. It would have been better if Mr Sunak had offered that as his priority. His decision to pay 80 per cent of the wages of all workers laid off by the economic effects of the virus is the right big gesture: it should also have been the first one.
If that cash does not reach the right people soon, two things will happen. First, there will be a sharp and deep downturn and it will be shaped, as one senior minister puts it, “Not like a V, but like an inverse L”. That could undermine the very structure of the economy and remove the skills that sustain it. Second, there will be huge and justified resentment at the sheer unfairness.
The comparison has been made, by the Government itself, with a war. The needs are absolute and urgent, and victory must benefit everyone. As we end the first week of full hostilities, the Government seems to be living by the old family motto, “Late, but in earnest”.