‘What would Boris do?’ PM’S absence felt at the heart of Cabinet

Raab’s calm approach welcomed by some but questions remain over decision-making

IF THERE is a solitary silver lining around the very dark cloud hanging above Downing Street right now, it is that Boris Johnson had the foresight to name a deputy.

Had the Prime Minister been admitted to intensive care without giving Cabinet ministers a clear idea of who should take charge, then an already difficult situation would have been made impossible.

With reports of festering tensions between Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, and Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, as those leading the Government’s response to Covid-19 vie to assert their authority, it is fair to say the sight of Dominic Raab stepping up as Mr Johnson’s stand-in has prompted sighs of relief from both ministers and MPS. While ambitious enough to have run for the Tory leadership last June, Mr Raab has received plaudits for the unselfish way in which he has so far reacted to unexpectedly being asked to run the country.

Setting out his stall on Monday in his first interview following news of Mr Johnson’s admission to St Thomas’ critical care unit, the former lawyer turned First Secretary was keen to stress the Cabinet would operate as a collective.

Insisting that the Government would be working “at the Prime Minister’s direction”, Mr Raab said: “There’s an incredibly strong team spirit behind the Prime Minister and making sure we get all of the plans that the PM has instructed us to deliver and get them implemented as soon as possible – that’s the way we’ll bring the whole country through the coronavirus challenge that we face right now.”

Yet while the sense of camaraderie is

‘In the medium to longer term, Dominic is probably not the right person to lead the Government or the party’

certainly admirable, the idea of a power vacuum at the heart of No 10 when Britain is in the grip of its biggest national emergency in peacetime will strike some as disconcerting and others as downright daunting.

Can a rudderless Cabinet deferring to a seriously ill Prime Minister from his hospital bed really be the best way out of this crisis? And what effect might Mr Johnson’s absence have on the lockdown? With Mr Johnson still not out of the woods, any hint of disloyalty appears to be a very bad look right now – even among the cravenly self-interested inhabitants of the Westminster village.

As one mischievous Cabinet minister put it: “Even Michael Gove isn’t on manoeuvres for once – it would be so insensitive.”

Although that has not stopped some of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster’s acolytes, famously dubbed “Govoids” by Priti Patel, the Home Secretary, questioning whether Mr Raab, the Foreign Secretary, is up to the task.

One Tory MP said: “The consensus is that in the short term we should definitely get behind him [Mr Raab] because it’s such an urgent pressing situation. But in the medium to longer term, if Boris is still not well enough then Dominic is probably not the right person to lead the Government or the party.”

Pointing to Mr Raab being beaten in the third round of the Conservative leadership contest by Rory Stewart, the MP suggested he was “quite an abrasive and divisive figure”, adding: “You have to have someone who is well respected or who has the legitimacy.

“We’re in an unfortunate situation where the Home Secretary has question marks over her, the Chancellor is very new, and therefore Dom of the Great Offices of State is in pole position.

“Gove is someone we could live with. Obviously not everyone likes him but people could live with him. It obviously has to be someone who is experienced in Cabinet.”

Yet Mr Gove, currently in 14 days’ self-isolation after his daughter developed coronavirus symptoms, remains unpopular with huge swathes of the party for stabbing Mr Johnson in the back in the 2016 leadership race. As one MP put it: “Most Tories would trust Raab more than Gove. They are mistrustful of anyone who seems on permanent manoeuvres.”

While not actively on manoeuvres, Mr Gove was said to be “puzzled that leading the Government’s plans to tackle the coronavirus went to someone who didn’t cover a related domestic portfolio”, according to one Conservative colleague. Yet it seems both Cabinet and party loyalty currently lies squarely with Mr Johnson.

Instead of deferring to Mr Raab, lauded for “taking control without throwing his weight around”, the question being asked by those around the virtual Cabinet table right now is: “What would Boris do?”

As one explained: “Dom was very sensible in talking about it being a Cabinet collective and team effort from the off. We are all thinking, ‘What would Boris do? What would he want us to do? How would he want us to behave?’ History is going to judge us on this and we don’t want to be remembered as a bunch of egos out to get each other but as politicians who stood up and helped the country through this.”

The Prime Minister’s hospitalisation also appears to have narrowed what at the weekend appeared to be a growing divide between those in favour of lifting the lockdown sooner, such as Rishi Sunak, the Chancellor, and those advocating later, such as Mr Hancock and Mr Gove.

Now it has emerged that the threeweek review of the measures that Mr Johnson had promised on Easter Monday is unlikely to take place at all.

One Cabinet minister who had previously been in favour of removing the restrictions “in weeks not months” said Mr Johnson’s worsening condition had made the case for keeping the restrictions in place.

“It makes the country more accepting of the need for lockdown when the PM is potentially fighting for his life,” they said.

Describing the Cabinet consensus, the Cabinet minister added: “We moved to lockdown when the country was ready for it and we only lift the lockdown when the country is ready.”

Another Cabinet minister, who also hinted that Monday’s reassessment wouldn’t go ahead, agreed: “What we are having to balance here is hard science and public confidence in the lockdown. The peak is forecast for April 20 so only after that can we even begin to think about a controlled step down.”

‘It makes the country more accepting of the need for lockdown when the PM is potentially fighting for his life’

Like millions of others, the news hit me like a punch: Johnson, Boris, our Prime Minister, the general leading our fight against Covid-19, was in intensive care. I’m usually inured to the awful, and had half been expecting something like this all day, but this was different. It felt personal. There was Carrie and his family. It was also almost incomprehensible, a case of cognitive dissonance: how could such a gregarious, indomitable figure be felled in such a way? How could it be that our PM, of all world leaders, ended up worst affected, in the midst of our Dunkirk?

The political and practical impacts have been seismic. Johnson’s worldview, instincts and personality make him the best possible leader to battle the coronavirus crisis, and his presence at the top of the (digital) Cabinet table is sorely missed. The Government’s performance these past 10 days would have been significantly improved had he – and his adviser Dominic Cummings, also badly affected but now recovering – been in full control.

It is imperative, therefore, that Dominic Raab, who is deputising for Johnson, begins every meeting with a simple question to the rest of the Cabinet: what would the boss be doing in our place? How would he be imposing his will on Whitehall? How can we try to do as he would?

The first order of business for those now wearing Johnson’s shoes is that the Cabinet should urgently be mapping out an exit strategy from the lockdown, as announced in other countries. Fatalities are surging to unbearable levels, but the peak will hopefully be reached soon, and after that the situation will look less atrocious. The lockdown can’t last very long, or else the country will be plunged into a crisis that could take decades to fix. Johnson, a freedom lover, understands this intuitively; the rest of the public sector establishment, not so much.

But this must be accompanied by a plan to contain and annihilate the coronavirus. Which shops should reopen first, and when should school restart? Should the vulnerable be told to continue to self-isolate, and the young allowed back first? What about mass tracing? Or “immunity passports”? It’s about sustainability, but also speed: the economy is collapsing.

If Johnson were around, all of this would surely be on the agenda. We cannot afford “adaptive triggering”, regular returns to partial or total lockdowns if the virus surges back over the next 18 months until a vaccine is developed (why so long?). This would rob business of certainty, destroy investment and ensure a debilitating L-shaped recovery.

The next way in which Johnson’s presence is missed is in his dealings with the machinery of state. The logistical failures surrounding personal protective equipment, the stunning lack of urgency over testing and the hopeless inability of the Treasury and HMRC to deliver help quickly confirm that the UK is sorely lacking in “state capacity”. That, for years, was exactly the Cummings/ Johnson critique. State structures reward incompetence and unresponsiveness; the performance of Public Health England (PHE), in particular, has been disgraceful. The Armed Forces are the only exception: their ability to help build NHS Nightingale was awe-inspiring.

So what would Johnson and Cummings be doing? Change must be rammed through. The Treasury should be given another kicking. PHE should be stripped of its broader responsibilities, which should be handed to a senior business figure. It should then be given a massive budget, and told to do whatever it takes to turbocharge testing to millions a day as soon as possible, procure 10 times more protective equipment (first for the NHS but then for the rest of society) and drastically speed up vaccine research. Land must be found and factories built and tooled in a matter of days. It is madness that the private sector, which has performed superbly with ventilators in particular, isn’t being allowed to help more. It should be leveraged to the maximum, as in America, where Apple’s supply chain is procuring millions of masks.

In an act of monumental generosity, Bill Gates is spending billions to build factories for the seven most promising potential vaccines, even though each can only make one particular variety, at least five will turn out to be duds and therefore most of the cash will be wasted: he wants production to commence as soon as the first vaccine gets signed off, so is hedging his bets. Why aren’t we doing the same? There isn’t enough supply, from protective kit to potential palliative drugs, so why not build more capacity in Britain?

Lord Bethell’s appointment as minister for testing was a good idea, but even more is needed. Somebody, such as the brilliant Lord Wolfson, boss of Next, should be brought in alongside him as CEO in charge of production, procurement and logistics, tasked with making everything from masks to vaccines, with just one mission: every day counts. This would be the ultimate Johnsonian grand projet.

Last but not least, “following the science” is hard. Does it make sense to close schools? A UCL study says no; others disagree. Should we wear masks? Many scientists now believe so; ours don’t. In early January, the Government’s New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group deemed the risk to the UK to be “very low”; by January 21, it was still “low”, as an investigation from Reuters reveals. Experts can get it terribly wrong. To govern is to choose.

On Monday night, my family prayed, in our different ways, for the PM to get well. In times such as these, and in such a theologically important week in particular, religion offers one possible refuge from the now obviously idiotic and delusional modernist view that we were on a holiday from history, a new, rationalist and invincible mutation of homo sapiens.

The reality is that nothing essential ever changes. Easter, for Christians, signifies rebirth; Passover, for the Jews, miraculous deliverance and freedom from oppression. The enumeration of the 10 plagues is one of the most striking parts of the Seder, eerily apposite this year. There will be an end to this nightmare, too, but the modern world will forever have lost its innocence.