Fraser Nelson:
Boris Johnson needs to trust his own ability to lead the country back to normality
How many people would you have to pass in a supermarket to run a serious risk of bumping into someone with Covid? It depends where you are in the country but the best estimate is about 4,000. Just 0.03 per cent of us have the virus, according to the latest official figures – and they’re falling all of the time. Most cases detected now are asymptomatic. So yes, there is still a risk – but it’s a manageable one.
But this isn’t quite the message being sent out by the Government. The order to wear masks when we enter shops says that the risk is pretty significant; that it’s not safe to carry on as we did before.
Rishi Sunak has offered us halfprice meals, and even went so far as to serve katsu curry in Wagamama in London last week. “Eat out to help out,” he says. But if the diners took the Tube home, they’d be violating official advice to “avoid using public transport unless it is essential”. Who are they supposed to believe?
Boris Johnson will today encourage us to start commuting again. His message makes sense: unemployment is surging and he badly needs companies to hire more staff. But he’s been contradicted already by Sir Patrick Vallance, his chief scientific adviser, who yesterday declared there to be “absolutely no reason” to change the stay-at-home advice. What are employers supposed to do?
We have our own problems at The Spectator, a magazine that depends on a small team being able to work closely together in an office. The Prime Minister last week said it was time to get back to work, but the official government advice remained unchanged: stay at home.
Robert Buckland, the Justice Secretary, summed it up a few days ago. The “guidance,” he said, is: work from home if you can. But the “message” is: yes, come back to work. His response was much mocked, but it’s an entirely accurate summary of a daft situation.
Contradiction and confusion has marked every stage of this crisis. Will all children be allowed to go back to school, or not? Will an NHS test-andtrace app be our route out of this, or not? It has been hard for Cabinet members, let alone the public, to work out what the Government is likely to do next. The idea of face masks being made compulsory is a serious point. Last weekend, Michael Gove was sent out into television studios to dismiss it. Even he had not been told that the law was about to change.
Part of this problem is structural. Far more power rests in 10 Downing Street nowadays, so much depends on its ability to translate ideas into action.
When Jeremy Heywood was running the Civil Service, he was pretty good at this. He’d keep quiet in meetings but then, at the end, think of five ways to implement what had been agreed. Sir Mark Sedwill, his successor, was more likely to add his opinion in such meetings – and less likely to follow up. This is, in part, why he had to go. But he has not been properly replaced yet, underlining the rudderless feel.
The other problem is that No. 10’s approach to Covid has changed. It is trying to shape public opinion, sending out medical experts to explain things. Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer and his two deputies, Jonathan Van-tam and Jenny Harries, were given plenty of airtime in the hope of inspiring public confidence. They all discouraged face masks: Dr Harries went as far as to say that masks were a risk because they collected germs, thereby spreading the virus. How nice, she said back in March, to work for a Government that follows scientific advice.
No 10 is now more interested in following public opinion, which is less craven than it sounds. Face masks are being made mandatory because people told opinion pollsters that this is what they wanted. The hope in No 10 is that mandatory masks will be a placebo intended to bolster confidence and lure more people to the shops. The risk, of course, is that it sends a very different message: that the virus is still such a threat that it’s unsafe to buy even a pint of milk without facial protection.
“The flakiest people throughout this crisis have been the behavioural scientists,” says one senior figure at the heart of the Government’s Covid response. “Their advice was wrong about public tolerance of lockdown. They’re guessing now what happens if we play into public fears.” Also, what will employers do, now that it’s harder than ever to predict how government rules will change?
Take recent rumours about compulsory face masks in offices. We’re assured it would never happen. But as Mr Gove found out, you never can tell.
The uncertainty itself will be hugely expensive. Employers need to take a view, right now, on how things will be in October as they decide to hire and fire. The virus has been in a steady and predictable decline for months, but lockdown guidance is anyone’s guess. This means new projects put on hold, trainee positions shelved and staff let go as companies wait out the uncertainty. This will mean more economic damage, imposed not by Covid but by a lack of confidence in what on earth the Government will do next.
The Prime Minister feels understandably stung by the failure of lockdown to limit the death toll in the way that he hoped. He remains worried about relaxing too quickly and bringing about a second wave.
But excessive caution now risks compounding the worst fatality count in Europe with the worst economic hit in Europe – more could die from the recession than the virus. A second wave of Covid is not inevitable. But lingering mass unemployment will be, unless he finds a way to revive the national mojo.
In short, the Prime Minister needs more confidence in his own ability to shape opinion. He led the public into lockdown, a project that would have been seen as unthinkable just a few months ago. He can now seek to lead the country back to normal – armed, as he is, with examples from around Europe that reopening is perfectly safe. He won a referendum and a general election. He would be listened to. All he needs to do is get his message straight.