Johnson’s Virus Strategy Hardens Divisions in Fractious Britain
Johnson’s Virus Strategy Hardens Divisions in Fractious Britain
(Bloomberg) -- It was 2.15 p.m. on Sunday and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fulfilling his promise to brief rival party leaders on his coronavirus strategy. It was meant to be a sign of national cooperation, with politics set aside in the crisis.
But over the course of a 40-minute conference call, Johnson’s opponents told him he was getting it wrong. His new slogan to “stay alert” was confusing, they said, and his plan to start easing restrictions on leisure activities and some workplaces risked giving the public the impression that the Covid-19 threat was over. Johnson listened -- and disagreed.
Seven weeks after he put the U.K. into an emergency lockdown, with more than 30,000 dead and the economy on its knees, the united political front that had defined the first phase of the British response finally splintered. The national mission to repel coronavirus has fragmented along familiar lines in a country whose divisions deepened during years of bitter wrangling over leaving the European Union.
The pro-independence Scottish leadership in Edinburgh denounced Johnson’s English approach in London, while the administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland are also taking different paths. The premier can’t stop them. Under the U.K.’s devolved constitution, regional governments have autonomy over health care and other matters, while centralized powers are reserved for areas such as national security.
A newly invigorated opposition Labour Party, now led by a former chief prosecutor, is also moving away from crisis solidarity. Business lobbies and unions have raised the alarm over the safety of workers, with the U.K. recording the worst death toll in the world after the U.S.
Blame Game
Inside the Conservative government, a blame game is quietly under way. In a series of private conversations, officials and politicians painted a picture of an administration arguing with itself over how to come out of the lockdown, and who was responsible for the errors made so far.
“The Cabinet is clearly split right now,” said James Sunderland, a Conservative member of Parliament. There are those ministers who want to lift the restrictions and “get the economy going” and others who prioritize keeping the public safe, he said.
With the coronavirus outbreak now past its peak in the U.K., it is an equation that is set to reshape the political debate as in other countries. Leaders and entire parties will be defined by how they balanced safety and public health with individual freedom and economic revival.
In Britain, the debate is causing tension the top of government. Ministers are weighing up whether to give more support to businesses, through paying the wages of furloughed workers for longer, or to lift the lockdown and get the economy back to work.
The stakes are high. Just a few months ago, Johnson’s legacy looked set as the leader who came back from the political wilderness to deliver Brexit after years of deadlock. He and his team know that a time will come when they will be required -- perhaps in front of an independent judge in a public inquiry -- to explain the decisions they took and the errors they made as the coronavirus swept through the U.K.
Four Nations
In public, Johnson said he welcomes the different approaches devolved administrations in Scotland and Wales are taking, and insisted the four nations of the U.K. do want to “move forward” together. His officials also stress that the engagement they have had with opposition party leaders has generally been constructive and reject the idea that ministers are at loggerheads with each other.
Yet privately, the tensions with Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who has never been a Johnson ally, have returned. One Downing Street official expressed frustration at the way she had revealed joint decisions to the public before Johnson could speak for the whole U.K. They suggested that then she had little right to complain -- as she has done -- about not being informed of key details in advance.
For Sturgeon and Labour leader Keir Starmer, the decision by Johnson to press ahead and abandon the “stay home” message this week became the moment to finally pull away.
Starmer was elected to lead his party at the height of the emergency on April 4. At the time there was talk of him potentially joining a government of national unity. He spoke to a clearly unwell Johnson later that day, as the prime minister’s own Covid-19 infection deteriorated. The next day, Johnson was taken to the hospital where his condition worsened further. He spent three nights in intensive care.
Goodwill Fades
With Johnson dangerously ill, and the country terrorized by the virus, politics as normal was put aside. The nation waited anxiously for news from St. Thomas’ Hospital, and Starmer and his counterparts in other parties sent messages of support to Johnson and his fiancee.
It was a month before the premier returned to the House of Commons on May 6 to face Starmer’s questioning for the first time. The goodwill for the newly recovered Johnson -- who had just become a father again -- was still there. But Starmer was forensic in his polite interrogation in a way that his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, never had been.
Johnson then gave the signal the country had been waiting for. From Monday May 11, he said, some of the lockdown measures will begin to be changed as the country begins to plot a path back to work.
The next day’s newspapers jumped on the hint to declare that “Lockdown Freedom Beckons” and told readers to look forward to “Happy Monday.” Johnson’s officials were aghast, fearing the message of cautious steps toward easing the strictest social distancing rules had been taken too far.
Members of Johnson’s team were angry at the way the media had taken the prime minister’s announcement. Yet one government adviser privately conceded that the administration’s own public messaging was confusing and unclear during the crisis.
‘Catastrophic Mistake’
It was a view the same opposition party leaders put back to Johnson in a Zoom video call on May 7, warning that those newspaper headlines were putting public health at risk.
In Edinburgh, Sturgeon was briefing reporters that Scotland would chart its own course out of the lockdown and that might not be in lockstep anymore with the rest of the U.K. She warned that changing the message could be a “catastrophic mistake.”
Before Johnson’s address to the nation Sunday, the party leaders returned to the theme. Some were not happy that the proposed new slogan of “stay alert” would replace the clearer message of “stay home,” which had been the lockdown mantra.
“I have absolutely no idea what stay alert means,” Colum Eastwood, the leader of Northern Ireland’s Social Democratic and Labour Party told the premier on the call. “The virus isn’t a burglar. I don’t think I can hide from it even if I tried.”
For opposition leaders, the calculation is also delicate. How far should the government’s opponents criticize, and how far should they support the national effort? With the country now past the worst, Johnson is finding out that the room for political attacks is growing.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.