There is too much fudge and not enough beef from this Government
Yes, they have a lot of crises facing them, but they need to step up and show us the way out of this quagmire
Shortly before lockdown, a friend called. An enthusiast for the realignment that he hoped would follow December’s Tory election victory, he likened the result to 1979, the year Margaret Thatcher was elected and began her mission to change Britain. In reply, I worried that the situation might resemble 1992, the year the Tories won a fourth term in office, only to come off the rails violently and almost immediately on Black Wednesday.
We do not know, of course, how the next few years will play out, and no historical comparison is ever exact. Unlike 1979, the Conservatives have been in office for 10 years. Unlike 1992, the Government faces not one crisis but several, each layered one over the other. And each alone is powerful enough to hole Boris Johnson’s premiership below the waterline.
We can start with the pandemic. There is little use, at this stage, assessing exactly what has gone right and wrong in Britain. A future inquiry will probably find that we were overprepared for an influenza pandemic and underprepared for a coronavirus. It will probably show that the NHS was too centralised and Public Health England too incompetent. It will probably say we failed to close our borders when we had the chance, locked down too late, and lacked the capacity to test and trace the virus early on. It will surely say that we failed to properly protect care homes.
This is serious stuff, but not necessarily politically fatal. Whatever the conspiracy theories, the minutes of the meetings of the Government’s scientific advisers show that the Prime Minister did “follow the science”. Whatever the problems with the response, the public knows that with a novel virus, the nature of which we did not know, mistakes were inevitable. Whatever domestic critics might allege, errors have been made elsewhere, which is why the likes of Emmanuel Macron in France and Pedro Sánchez in Spain have apologised to their people.
In Britain, too, ministers will have to admit that the Government did not, as they still insist, make the right calls at the right time. It would be better if they acknowledged this sooner rather than later for two reasons. First, the public is more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt if the truth is not dragged out of them. And secondly, candour can create space to get their policy back on track.
This is no straightforward matter. The lockdown is in effect over, killed off not by ministerial decree but by public fatigue and mass protests. The official relaxations and updated distancing rules are confusing and sometimes counter-intuitive. But communication problems are only a symptom of deeper difficulties. Britain is not yet on top of the virus, ministers are uncertain that the new track-and-trace policy can be delivered, and they are split about how soon to lift the restrictions on everyday life.
The reason, of course, is that many ministers are profoundly worried about the looming economic crisis. The massive and unprecedented interventions made by the Chancellor to keep businesses alive and people in work have shielded millions from economic insecurity, but they have also hidden the reality that unless we return to work soon, the recession we face will be longer, more painful and harder to escape. We need not only a plan to get Britain back to work, but clear details – on distancing rules and protective equipment, for example – that will avoid a second wave of new infections.
As if these public health and economic crises were not enough, ministers must contend with a culture war that has gone from lukewarm to red hot in just a few weeks.
The Government cannot be held responsible for the actions of a minority of extremists, nor for operational policing decisions on the ground. But it does have a responsibility to lead. The police response to violent disorder by Left-wing protesters a week or so ago was weak, and the political response was ambivalent at best. It should not be impossible for ministers to accept the need to address racial injustices, while also insisting that the police confront violence. But it took more than a week for them to do so.
As these crises go on, the Brexit negotiations – until recently, the most serious and urgent task facing the Government – continue. Trade talks with other countries, which will bring to the fore Tory divisions over international trade liberalisation, are under way. And China, the West’s vast and menacing strategic rival, is capitalising on the divisions within and between the liberal democracies. It is understandable that we do not know the likely outcome of the Brexit negotiations – since much rests on the actions of the other side – but we still know little of the Government’s intended policies on international trade and towards China.
There is, of course, always some fudge in politics, and the pandemic and its economic consequences were a nasty surprise that nobody predicted when Boris won his election in December. But now, with multiple crises before him, there is too much fudge and not enough beef.
Nobody expects the Government to magic up immediate solutions to every problem. Some will require significant reform to public services and changes to the state itself. Some will demand changes in policy, from planning laws to technical education, that will take months and years to come to fruition. Some will require diplomacy and negotiations with other countries, the results of which we cannot predict.
Fighting on so many fronts will require Downing Street to trust more in the Cabinet. It will necessitate higher-quality ministers, too. But above all it will demand a greater sense of urgency and direction, on the way out of lockdown, how we learn to live with this virus, and how we rebuild our economy. On these challenges, the cultural battles engulfing us, and the geopolitical and trading issues that await us, ministers need to explain how Brexit and the plan to level-up the country are not just baggage from a pre-crisis era, but directly relevant to their plans for recovery and to make Britain a better and fairer place. It is not too late to rediscover the reforming zeal of 1979, and avoid the curse of 1992.