The machinery of government will go on, but the absence of Boris’s leadership will be felt
For most of us, our reaction to Boris Johnson’s transfer to intensive care was humane concern. Boris is a father, son and brother, and partner to a pregnant Carrie Symonds. We contemplated the anxiety Boris must have felt, and the worried love of his family.
But he is also our Prime Minister, and people wondered, understandably, about the government of the country. Especially at times of crisis, we all need the reassurance of visible and decisive leadership. Many asked: who is in charge?
Constitutional historians explain that the PM is nothing more than primus inter pares, the first among equals in Cabinet. And, of course, a great number of the state’s functions – from welfare payments to operational policing matters – continue without ministerial involvement. Likewise, any number of ministerial decisions are made without reference to the prime minister. In many ways, the business of government goes on as before.
But, of course, we are living through a public health crisis, in which the state has assumed huge powers in the economy and our day-to-day lives. The Government’s task – led by the Prime Minister – is to steer us through the lockdown, protect the NHS, and find a way back to economic and social normality.
At the same time, the enormous responsibilities of prime ministers remain. Threats from terrorists and hostile states have not disappeared. Russia has sent its warships into the English Channel and North Sea. Iran, ravaged by the virus, is unstable and unpredictable. It is the Prime Minister’s job to determine Britain’s response to any threats to our security and interests.
There are established plans and processes to make sure we have clear and legitimate leadership when a prime minister is, for whatever reason, unable to fulfil his or her duties. Boris Johnson made the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, his First Secretary of State for this reason. It meant Mr Raab would deputise for him in circumstances just like those in which we find ourselves today.
Whitehall conducts regular exercises – preparing for wars, terror attacks and pandemics – in which ministers and officials must step into the shoes of their superiors. The decisions they take – shooting down hijacked passenger planes, responding to nuclear attacks – are dilemmas we everyday citizens would never want to confront. But the exercises make for better systems and decision-makers.
So from a constitutional and administrative perspective, we know who is in charge. Just like in normal times, we have Cabinet government. And for this extraordinary period we have a First Secretary of State deputising for the Prime Minister.
But there is no point pretending that things will work as normal. To do so would suggest that the attributes of an individual prime minister matter little. And this is clearly untrue.
The uncertainty surrounding testing policy, for example, showed that the absence of Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, was inhibiting decision-making. Likewise, the blame game and briefing war at the weekend was further evidence of a leadership vacuum.
This is the real danger. The challenge of Boris’s absence is not constitutional but political and psychological. Ministers and officials need leadership as much as the public. Without it, there is hesitation not action, fuzz not clarity, and jockeying not clear political direction.
Get well soon, Boris, the country needs you back at the helm.