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Boris Johnson’s Bet on British Common Sense Isn’t Paying Off

Boris Johnson’s Bet on British Common Sense Isn’t Paying Off

Boris Johnson does not like rules. The U.K. prime minister presumes his compatriots don’t either. Good old British “common sense” will always save the day.

As a key architect of the 2016 “Leave” campaign to exit the European Union, Johnson leaned heavily on the message that the British craved freedom from the strictures set by faceless, unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. This year he’s spent months of the coronavirus pandemic shying away from setting rules for social distancing and personal safety, even as the death rate in the U.K. climbed to the highest in Europe. Instead, his Conservative government used words such as “guidelines” and “advice,” putting the onus on the public to, as he said, “do the right thing.”

Johnson was pictured in the early days of the outbreak shaking hands with people sans mask as officials talked about the need for “herd immunity.” There was a new seriousness when he became severely ill himself with Covid-19, but even afterward he and his senior ministers held fast to the view that the famed common sense of the people meant they didn’t need or want the government to nanny them.

There are all sorts of tropes about the British, some more true than others. People are indeed generally good at queuing. They let other drivers merge onto the road. But is that kind of amorphous civic sensibility what’s needed to deal with a cataclysmic public-health crisis?

It’s all been terribly polite. Johnson asked behavioral psychologists in the government’s so-called nudge unit to persuade the public to do the right thing. Senior cabinet minister Michael Gove said wearing a mask was a matter of “good manners.” Johnson himself spoke of the “ancient inalienable right of the freeborn people of the United Kingdom to go to the pub”—before daily infection numbers suddenly forced the government to shut the bars down.

“There is a disconnect between the British elites and the society they are intended to serve,” says Lee Elliot Major, professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter. “In a complex multicultural society where you’ve got huge differences in background, you need more clarity, you need clear rules.” The prime minister, a former student at both Eton College and the University of Oxford who’s a distant descendant of King George II, increasingly appears caught in a monolithic version of a U.K. that’s in reality far more diverse, fractured, and unequal, say political observers.

Now, with his scientific advisers urging a brief national lockdown, Johnson is being dragged toward tighter restrictions and greater enforcement. If the prime minister obliges, it will be with gritted teeth. He and his senior Tory lawmakers are seeking to balance health and safety against an economy in deep trouble, where jobs were lost at a record pace in the three months prior to August. Regional leaders and business groups alike are worried about further economic damage. On Oct. 19 the local government announced that all of Wales would be under full lockdown from Oct. 23 to Nov. 9.

But his reluctance to impose further restrictions also stems from his belief that Britons can and should police themselves. Infamous for his own messy private life, Johnson doesn’t want to tell them what to do with theirs. “Boris is very much a libertarian, and that’s his instincts,” says Major, co-author of a new book, What Do We Know and What Should We Do About Social Mobility? And it’s not just Johnson. “This isn’t a right vs. left debate,” Major says. “It’s a different dimension of political belief. It’s how much you want state intervention and rules vs. freedom. You get people both on the left and right who adhere to that” idea of the government giving orders.

The stakes are potentially high for Johnson—and for his Tories, some of whom have been openly questioning his handling of the crisis. They think he’s been too heavy-handed with his restrictions. He’s faced two rebellions in his ranks in Parliament of late from lawmakers seeking greater say over how he’s deciding policy related to the pandemic.

There are different sets of advice for different parts of England, creating a patchwork of guidance that even lawmakers have struggled to keep up with. The guidelines have sown confusion and frustration. Many people wouldn’t wear masks, at least initially. There were large gatherings in parks and at backyard parties. And yet police mostly just asked people to move on rather than issuing fines. In the four weeks to Sept. 30, 151 virus-related fixed penalty notices were issued by the police in England and Wales. From June 15 to Sept. 21, just 89 fines were issued for breaches of face covering regulations across England and Wales. Meanwhile, self-isolation for those with symptoms or who’ve returned from certain countries has been another matter of just “doing the right thing.” Checks to ensure people are staying home are rare.

The concept of collective responsibility still exists in the U.K., says Paula Surridge, a political sociologist at the University of Bristol, but it’s become more about protecting “in groups,” the smaller circles that people feel part of. “People need to be clear about what is and isn’t acceptable, especially in a crisis like this where much of the guidance is to protect other people, not to protect yourself,” she says. “It needs to be much clearer that they are rules, not guidance, and common sense is not enough, because you’re not just trying to make a decision about your own health and about your own family. Your behavior affects everyone else as well.”

The lack of firm rules and leadership has given rise to a “dob in a neighbor” culture—that is, in American, “snitching.” “There’s a real sense of judging others and being judged,” says Deborah Mattinson, co-founder of consulting firm BritainThinks. “It’s interesting, because at the beginning there was a feeling of we’re all in this together. We were very united against the virus, and now there’s this sense of division, that people are judging their neighbors. There’s more division now, and I think that’s something the government needs to work at,” she says. “It’s very difficult to do when you’re doing different things in different places and it’s not always apparent why.”

A recent survey by BritainThinks found that more than two-thirds of people feel pessimistic about the U.K. and that 74% believe it will become more divided in the next year. More than 80% say the country needs a strong leader now more than ever. YouGov’s Covid tracker, meanwhile, showed at the end of September that just 31% of people thought the government was handling the pandemic very or somewhat well, down from 44% in late June and 60% in late April.

It’s not just the U.K. that’s struggling. Leaders around the world are grappling with an unprecedented health-care and economic crisis and having to make policy decisions on the fly. Public resistance to lockdowns is growing, even where virus cases are spiking. Some governments have much stricter enforcement, including compulsory hotel quarantines and hefty fines levied for ignoring rules concerning social distancing, going out in public, and wearing masks. In Singapore, even talking loudly on a train is discouraged, on the theory that it may spread the virus faster.

But in the U.K., stricter approaches have faced particular and practical challenges. The government’s track-and-trace system has been dogged with false starts and system glitches. People are forced to pay hundreds of pounds for private tests, because the public system is overloaded. That’s adding to the sense that they have to muddle through on their own.

Tensions over Johnson’s handling of the pandemic are putting hairline cracks in the stunning parliamentary majority he won in December’s election, in which he wooed away long-term Labour voters in England’s northern industrial regions—the so-called Red Wall that was the leftist party’s core—which have been slowly decaying economically. He promised them revitalization, progress, and prosperity, all part of his message that a post-Brexit U.K. would emerge strong and proud, able to make its own economic choices and play a key role in geopolitical hot spots. He calls it “Global Britain.”

The difficulty with that messaging is that it reflects a another Johnsonesque view of the U.K.—one anchored in a monolithic, still faintly imperial nation, whereas political cohesion is corroding and identity is increasingly based on being English, Scottish, or Welsh rather than British. For example, surveys show support for Scottish independence at an all-time high. Divisions in economic status, race, and religion are also visible.

And those voters in the northern parts of England are growing restless and may be turning Labour red again. In opinion polls, the proportion of people who now say they don’t know who they’d vote for is much higher among those who backed the Conservative Party in 2019 in those areas, says Surridge of the University of Bristol. “They haven’t gone as far as saying they will vote Labour, but they are starting to become a little bit detached from the Conservative Party, and that I think will be a cause of concern.”

Local elections scheduled for this year have been deferred, but that simply means that Johnson’s leadership will be further tested when the votes take place next year. Mattinson of BritainThinks recently interviewed some of the voters in northern areas she’d spoken to earlier for her book Beyond the Red Wall. “They’re very, very, very disappointed in Boris Johnson,” she says. “One of them said to me, which I thought was very telling: ‘We voted for bold, and we’ve ended up with waffle.’ ” Even so, because the public wants the virus to be beaten, “they’re kind of willing him to win in that respect.”

According to the BritainThinks survey, 73% felt there was one rule for the public and another for elites. Only 12% agreed that “U.K. politicians understand people like me.” An issue that’s compounded that sense of disconnect has been lawmakers themselves not following the guidance.

Johnson’s chief strategist, Dominic Cummings, drove 260 miles in March to seek child-care support at a time the country was in lockdown—and he did this after his wife began to develop Covid symptoms and he feared he’d also contracted it. Despite the public furor, Cummings kept his job. “The government quite early on backed themselves into a corner by not abiding by the rules,” says Surridge, who adds that the Cummings scandal “really cut through as a symbol of breaking the rules. It left the government in a very difficult position as to how they can then enforce rules rather than say, ‘Oh, it’s fine to use your common sense and do what’s best for your family.’ ”

More recently, Scottish National Party lawmaker Margaret Ferrier broke self-isolation rules to attend Parliament in London while waiting for the result of a coronavirus test. After receiving the result—which was positive—she traveled back to Scotland by train. She later told the Sun that “a lot of people say Covid makes you do things out of character. You’re not thinking straight.” Despite calls for her resignation, she’s refused to step down. Police have said they will not fine her.

The prime minister enjoys joking around and likes to be liked—that contributed to his winking charm and common-touch oratory. But it’s all starting to fall flat amid the health crisis. He’s lost the goodwill he earned from both lawmakers and voters with the “we’re in this together” rhetoric he used in March, which referenced the wartime words of Winston Churchill.

One of Johnson’s ministers recently described him as being tired and not enjoying himself. This was not what he signed up for, Johnson told his colleague. “He is a sunlit uplands man, isn’t he?” says Mattinson, using the sort of language evoked by Johnson, which refers to a longed-for future of happiness and prosperity. “He can do sunlit uplands. It’s much harder to do the more gloomy stuff.” It takes much more than just common sense.
 
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