Voters won’t forgive Boris a second lockdown
No10 can and will be held to account over its preparations for a winter resurgence of Covid
As second-wave fears slowly reach a crescendo, the summer 2020 soundtrack crackles of déjà vu. But strain your ears, for the national mood music is changing. Yes, the mainstream remains nervous about coming out of hibernation. Still, have Britons just twigged something explosive? No10 may have “done its best in a difficult situation” when the pandemic first hit, as Workington Man has tutted for months at hyper-critical London hacks. But received wisdom is starting to toy with the idea that avoiding both a second wave and a second lockdown is possible. If the idea sticks, opinion could rapidly turn against the Tories.
This week something extraordinary happened. Amid the usual cacophony of second-wave hysteria there was a brief moment when lockdown sceptics and second-wave doomsters sang from the same hymn sheet. In particular, No10’s political critics, the media and scientists proved themselves capable, albeit fleetingly, of communicating in unison two important things with which few lockdown sceptics would quibble. First, a sensible timetable for a possible second wave, which assumes that while the virus has, for now, subsided it may come back in winter. Second, that the Government can and should be held to account over its preparations for such a resurgence.
Well, sort of. “Current testing and contact tracing is inadequate to prevent a second wave of coronavirus after schools in the UK reopen,” rattled the BBC’S lead story on Tuesday. So far so scaremongering, particularly given the lack of evidence that children transmit the disease. But an interesting logic ran through the report: it referenced modelling from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) suggesting that if Covid returns this winter, track and trace could prevent both a surge and the need for “intermittent lockdown measures” when schools reopen.
Recognition is growing then that the race is on to avoid a second lockdown as well as a second wave (or as some of us prefer to describe it, the seasonal return of an endemic coronavirus); both are possible if only ministers get their act together. In recent days, one of the WHO’S top “disease detectives”, Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, urged countries not to reimpose this “blunt, sheer force instrument”. And on Tuesday, none other than Tony Blair called for mass testing to avoid another lockdown, claiming that, in the absence of a vaccine, it is the only thing that “gets you to a place where you can more or less get your economy moving whilst containing the disease”.
Still, if people suspect that the second wave is already here, how can ministers be blamed for failing to prepare? So it’s probably a coincidence that Downing Street continues to circulate potentially misleading data that suggests Covid is surging in the community; in fact, as Oxford University pointed out this week, when case figures are adjusted for changes in testing over time, community infection looks to be flatlining, as hospital cases fall.
Heaven forbid that the state’s “experts” might call out such distortions. Instead, Sage scientists have proved No 10’s useful idiots, whipping up second-wave frenzy as they lobby for “realistic” policies in the media. Take Sage stalwart and LSHTM Professor Graham Medley’s claim that pubs may have to shut as a “trade off ” so schools can reopen; a curious message to peddle given that his own university’s latest schools modelling suggests a proper track-and-trace system could prevent the need for such a choice. But here we have perhaps hit on an interesting split between scientists close to No10 and those more embedded in academia. The former, who are captive to the system, have a habit of dishing out advice that seems to adapt to rather than confront the Government’s failings.
The broadcast media is, naturally, more than willing to point out No 10’s deficiencies. Trouble is, it is constantly distracted by the temptations of second-wave scaremongering. And so it goes that this week, one German doctor’s heavily caveated remarks about a “shallow second upswing” that is not comparable to the force of the first triggered a viral story that Germany could already be in the jaws of a second wave. It was somehow lost in translation that this country of 83 million people had 12 recorded Covid-related deaths yesterday.
Nor has Sir Keir Starmer quite got the memo that a second lockdown spells disaster for the Tories in the Red Wall. His warning yesterday that “if the Government doesn’t use this summer wisely … Britain faces a long and bleak winter” groped at, rather than grasped, the crucial point. As Northern councils threatened by local lockdowns launch their own bottom-up track-and-trace operations in despair at No10’s over-centralised approach, that noble centralising socialist institution, the Labour Party, has a strange opportunity: hammer home how it would decentralise track and trace to avert nationwide shutdown.
And so in the fog of panic, there is a glimmer of light. Or, if you are the PM, a glint of menace. For if a summer narrative sets in that No10 has the power to prevent a second lockdown and then it fails to do so, the price is simple: Boris Johnson will not win another election.