Apr 17

Apr 17 Coronavirus blows a hole in Boris Johnson’s populism By Stephen Barber

We are likely to look back on the Coronavirus crisis as one of those points in history which alters the trajectory of life. Political priorities have already had to be reappraised. And, as the example of Britain shows, the easy populism which has proved so electorally effective in recent years has suddenly run out of road. Boris Johnson and his populist government have had to embrace the very people they once eschewed…. experts.

Long after the shops, pubs and restaurants reopen, after people try to resume their normal lives, return to work and travel freely, the unusual times through which we are living will still be felt. The coronavirus crisis will have a lasting impact and that impact will be global. It has already devastated families with so many untimely deaths around the world. It has hit businesses large and small as the brakes are slammed on economic growth. And it will also change politics.

While there is global coordination, the responses to this crisis have been national. Countries where there is usually easy movement have closed their borders and restrictions have differed from one nation to the next. Political leadership will be judged in this way and comparisons can easily be made both in texture and in hard numbers.

In Britain the response has, nonetheless, been broadly consistent with other countries: a strict lockdown and social distancing has been enforced. Additional resources have been ploughed into the National Health Service including a 4000 emergency bed Hospital opening in London’s ExCeL exhibition centre. Meanwhile the Treasury has committed seemingly unlimited cash to support businesses, those who might otherwise have been made redundant and the self-employed. Four weeks into this lockdown and the measures appear to be paying off. Cases and coronavirus deaths seem to be flattening out.

All this intervention has not prevented the government being criticised. It has been accused of acting too late, of providing insufficient protective equipment for frontline medical staff, of failing to test to an adequate extent to discover who has the virus, and of ignoring the sad plight of care homes. Overall, political leadership can be said to have been rather reactive rather than strategic. This can be seen in the daily press briefings from Number 10 Downing Street which have tended to respond to the charges found in the press that day with new announcements or commitments. Some ministers, including the Health Secretary Matt Hancock, have at times seemed out of their depth. Mind you, one politician has come into his own during this crisis. The young Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, largely unknown just a few months ago, has emerged as perhaps the government's most empathetic figure.

That said, Britain has been in the unusual position of lacking a Prime Minister. In the midst of one of the biggest peace time crises, Boris Johnson was struck down by the very same virus his government had dedicated itself to defeating. Johnson found himself in intensive care, unable you do his job. As he told the country on his emergence from hospital, 'it could have gone either way'.

Johnson is a ‘feelgood’ politician not an ideologue. To some, an entertaining buffoon whose lack of seriousness is perhaps unsuited to a crisis this grave. But it was those very qualities which allowed him to lead the successful Brexit campaign of 2016 and to deliver a landslide election victory for his Conservative party in December. Both of those victories were delivered on the back of easy populism. They were campaigns which rejected evidence and data and instead embraced dismissive slogans and popular fantasy. Few will forget Michael Gove's effective rebuttal of some inconvenient evidence during the referendum campaign with the simple: 'I think we have all had enough of experts haven't we?' Both campaigns managed to mobilise an electoral demographic taken for granted by the Labour Party and left behind by global competition.

And yet here we are just weeks on (but what seems like a political lifetime) in a crisis which has turned government priorities on their head and instilled an approach which is wholly reliant on experts. Ministers - whether Johnston himself, Hancock or even Gove - no longer appear at the Downing Street briefing without being flanked by the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Scientific Officer. And it is to these experts of the highest order, that Britain's once populist politicians defer daily. We have policy driven experts, evidence and modelling.

And the policy decisions made in these few weeks - from the lockdown to the NHS to the huge fiscal measures intended to support the economy - will define the rest of this Parliament and beyond. Responding to this crisis has rewritten priorities and blown a hole in the populist approach to politics. Things will not be the same again.

Stephen Barber (@StephenBarberUK) is Professor of Global Affairs at Regent’s University London