STURGEON GOES HER OWN WAY
Rarely has the United Kingdom looked less united, said The Guardian. Until last week, its four constituent nations had adopted a common approach to the coronavirus, but Boris Johnson’s poorly received TV address shattered that consensus, leaving him the de facto Prime Minister of England alone. Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s First Minister, refused to drop the “Stay at home” message for the vaguer “Stay alert” slogan, as did the Welsh and Northern Irish governments, and significant policy differences emerged between the nations. In England, for instance, you can drive somewhere to take exercise; in Scotland and Wales, you can’t. In England, golf courses and non-essential building sites are opening; north of the border, they remain shut (although Scottish restrictions are set to be eased from the end of next week). In Northern Ireland, up to six people from different households can meet outdoors; in England, only two people from different households can meet.
There’s no problem in principle with the idea of variable policies, said The Times. “This was, after all, the purpose of devolution.” But it’s not helpful to have “significant and confusing divergence” when you’re fighting an infectious disease that doesn’t recognise national boundaries. It would be better if leaders resisted the temptation to play politics and the nations of the UK marched “in lockstep on their muddled exit from lockdown”. Different rules certainly pose practical problems, said Sebastian Payne in the FT. The fourth hole of the Llanymynech golf course starts in Wales and ends in England. Some housing estates straddle the two nations. That gives rise to all sorts of absurdities.
“For once, Nicola Sturgeon is not playing politics,” said Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph. If she’s more reluctant than Johnson to ease the lockdown, it’s because the rate of Covid-19 infection seems to be twice as bad in Scotland as it is in London. There’s a clear case for allowing regional variations in the speed of easing the lockdown, agreed Lesley Riddoch in The Scotsman. London is seeing ever fewer new cases of Covid-19: at this rate, they’ll peter out entirely by 1 June. But Yorkshire and the northeast are still recording 4,000 new cases a day. Other countries in Europe have adopted a multi-speed approach. In Germany, every single county sets its own rules. Johnson’s “one size fits all” approach is “the product of a mindless, rampaging centralisation that’s rarely exposed for the dangerous, counterproductive and peculiarly British default it has become”.