We must be prepared to live with Covid-19

The Cabinet must change its disastrous wartime narrative and treat this crisis for what it really is

There is nothing worse than a bad metaphor in a crisis. Just as Blair and Bush declared a “war on terror” in the wake of 9/11, Trump is “mobilising” against a mysterious “Chinese virus”. Meanwhile Britain has created a “War Cabinet” and instructed its Home Front to stay indoors while invoking the Blitz spirit.

As in 2003, the public, more interested in the balance of evidence than bellicose bluster, is on side for now. Although modelling has found that tougher lockdown restrictions would only delay the peak until autumn, most people are willing to sit tight for a couple more weeks, to see if the crisis “peaks”, as new cases fall.

Still, a crunch point looms: some ministers – such as Michael Gove and Matt Hancock – miscalculate that they can keep lockdown going for months if cases don’t drop quickly enough. The opposing Cabinet faction – reportedly including Dominic Raab and Rishi Sunak – will struggle; when you are stuck in a trap it’s hard to gain momentum. Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings unwittingly laid it when they were pressured into ditching herd immunity.

If the duumvirate had not been struck by illness, I have no doubt that by now they would have displayed the clarity of mind to realise that their original U-turn – from herd immunity to lockdown – was a mistake and must now be followed by an inevitable reverse U-turn. With no vaccine, and unable to shut down businesses indefinitely, the Government was always going to have to switch back to Plan A after demonstrating it had done everything it could to save lives without permanently ruining the economy.

Perhaps they might have done this by framing the outbreak of Covid-19 as more similar to the Aids crisis than the Second World War. That is, to explain that a nasty new virus is suddenly in our midst and that scientists have limited knowledge of how it spreads, how to cure it or whether it might mutate. Neither superforecasters nor epidemiologists can project its impact. Nor can we trust the death figures for now because this virus is statistically difficult to track. (Just as in the Eighties we had to get our heads around a deadly illness that did not directly kill people, we must now find a way to distinguish between those who die with Covid and victims who die of it.)

Lockdown should be sold for what it is – a way of buying time for the health service, while the scientists get to know their new subject better and politicians get a grip on the best way forward.

Instead, wartime bluster is unrealistically raising expectations. The media’s desperate search for the Government’s secret weapon to blast the virus – before finally settling on the idea that the silver bullet must be mass testing, and skewering ministers and PHE over their related failings – being a striking example.

It is also validating obsolete politics. The fact that Tony Blair has in recent days egged on No 10 to go further with its War Cabinet model, appointing a minister for testing, is surely sign enough that the approach is bunkum. The view that efficient logistics can beat a complex virus is not surprising from an ideological managerialist like Blair. But from this “disruptive” new Government it is disappointing.

Time to ditch the military analogies. Coronavirus may be something we must simply learn to live with. Such a message may be against the better nature of centrist politicians who have spent the last 30 years protecting us from the Other (Saddam Hussein) and ourselves (nativist populism). But they can yet change their attitude, and compellingly sell the truth of the matter to the public.

Here is an opportunity for No 10’s behavioural scientists to come into their own. Small but significant behaviour changes like hand-washing and a new social-distancing etiquette will be vital to rallying the public round the new common goal of protecting the most vulnerable while keeping the world turning. So, too, local volunteer schemes, such as weekend shops for self-isolating elderly people.

A Cummingsian three-word slogan would also help. Something that washes away the previous sins of politicians and plays into our evolutionary instincts like “Take Back Control” (humans hate to lose things). Something that, like all good political slogans, has that slight cheap perfume of something you’ve read in a self-help book or heard in a hundred pop songs. I invite Mr Cummings to dream up something more inspired than my own suggestion: along the lines that Britain must “Keep On Going”.

This will give us the temporary engine power to get out of this rut. But it’s a hard road ahead. As well as contending with global economic collapse, our leaders will have to debate controversial long-term solutions like biometric surveillance. They will have to weigh up protecting at-risk groups with intruding on their freedoms.

Such a change in political vision for dealing with Covid-19 will not be easy. Dominic Raab can be a stand-in lost in the footnotes. Or he can take a stand, and change the genre of this disastrous wartime plot.