(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Boris Johnson clearly wants to draw a line under the fiascoes of Britain’s handling of the pandemic and return to the “boosterism” for which he is best known. And as is often the case, his instinct is right. Doing so will be crucial to putting the economy firmly on a path to recovery.
The U.K. downgraded its coronavirus alert level on Friday, signaling that more lockdown restrictions can be lifted, but Johnson won’t be able to turn the page just like that. More than half the British population thinks the government is handling the crisis poorly or fairly poorly, according to a Kantar survey published this week. A string of errors, U-turns, corrections and confusions in the government’s virus response have dented the almost unassailable levels of public confidence that followed Johnson’s election victory in December.
Most people understand that the coronavirus is a once in a century shock that no government was fully prepared for. But rather than learn from how other countries had responded to Covid-19 as it spread from Wuhan in China, Britain turned into an epicenter for the outbreak, becoming the worst-hit country in Europe and one of the worst globally, by defiantly striking a path of its own.
The list of missteps is long and sobering, starting with the original embrace of a laissez-faire approach to the virus (called herd immunity). A decision not to widely implement testing meant more than 25,000 hospital patients were discharged to care homes for the elderly, where the virus proved deadly. Shortages of personal protective equipment and outdated guidance on how much should be worn contributed to the deaths of nearly 200 frontline health- and social-care workers. A dismissive view of wearing face masks may have compounded matters, just as other countries were concluding they would help control transmission.
These policies ran directly counter to what countries with more successful responses were doing. All were eventually reversed, but not before they contributed to the exorbitant costs of the crisis for the U.K. On Thursday came another U-turn: The government canned its “world-beating” contact-tracing app, and said it is now turning to the one developed by Google and Apple Inc. Only now the app won’t be ready before winter and is no longer a priority.
This obsession with British exceptionalism, as some have noted, has proved a costly hubris. The U.K. economy shrunk by the most ever in April. Jobless claims surged to almost 3 million during lockdown, and that’s despite a government furlough program that’s supporting nearly 9 million jobs. Britain’s level of public debt has just risen above 100% of gross domestic product for the first time since 1963. Public confidence in the economy hit its lowest level since measurement began in August 2011, the Kantar survey showed.
One of the great lessons of the 2008 financial crisis was how deeply and enduringly public trust could be destroyed. By 2012, the OECD reported that only four in 10 people in advanced economies had confidence in their government. That made it hard to win public acceptance of necessary reforms. Trust can be difficult to measure, but it matters a great deal in encouraging consumption and investment.
The U.K.’s economy is largely consumption driven, with services accounting for more than 80% of gross domestic product. The question is how much that declining trust will translate into suppressed demand.
While Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak has won high marks for responding to the economic crisis with the generous furlough scheme and other measures, it’s clear government spending cannot remain at this level indefinitely.
Britain’s high death toll means that there is little public tolerance for a second wave of infections. But nor will a second lockdown be readily accepted, given the collateral damage it has caused from compromised non-Covid medical care to long-term damage to children out of school and a rise in mental health problems. Johnson desperately needs an economic recovery, but first he needs to put in place all the tools necessary to keeping Covid-19 in check.
The past three months have shown that the countries that moved early to control the virus, supported incomes and jobs during the lockdown phase and used widespread testing to keep close tabs on transmission, have done better in both public health and economic terms. The U.K. has done only one of those three things well — income support. As both former Prime Minister Tony Blair and former Conservative leader and foreign secretary William Hague have argued, wide-scale testing remains the best way forward.
Going into the crisis, Johnson was riding high, both within his party and the public. He had won a decisive electoral victory, clinched an exit deal with the European Union and ended Britain’s tortured debate over Brexit. He still enjoys a large parliamentary majority, a lead over Labour in the polls and a long stretch before he has to face another election. So there’s perhaps time to get things right.
But trust is not easy to rebuild, and Britain can’t somehow skip the stages of virus control and move straight into a robust economic recovery. A large part of the country effectively shut down well before Johnson finally told people to stay at home on March 23. They will return at scale not when the government says it’s safe, but when they believe it to be.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Therese Raphael is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. She was editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal Europe.
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