Covid in Britian

AS Britain’s official Covid death toll reaches six figures it is worth recalling how, when the pandemic was taking hold last spring, Sir Patrick Vallance declared that keeping fatalities below 20,000 would be a “good outcome”. On that measure, and by international standards, the Government’s performance on meeting the medical challenge has been appalling.

By contrast, the Government’s record on protecting the economy has been much more impressive. The fact that unemployment has risen to a fouryear high of 5% of the workforce — some 1.7 million people — is obviously disappointing. But without the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme and the various other measures, this figure would not only be higher but pushing the economy into a slump from which it would be impossible to break free. It is a disaster that never happened because of international efforts to save the world from a deep recession.

Yesterday’s devastating death toll has taught us the grim results of failing to react quickly and boldly enough when faced with a crisis. The Government must not repeat that approach when it comes to fighting for our economic recovery.

With luck, the economic aftereffects of Covid and Brexit should be less dire than they might otherwise be. The 2020s, however, seem set to be a decade of hard slog to pay down debts and build new industries. What might be termed “long economic Covid” will be as debilitating as the medical real thing.