What could an official enquiry into the COVID-19 pandemic lead to? As the nature of modern British politics has shown – this process can be a source of very sordid entertainment, Foreign Policy Magazine reports.
Over the past few weeks, the UK’s most prominent lawyers have been questioning those at the helm of the British state in west London about their response to the pandemic. The investigation will peak with former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other key ministers being questioned, including current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor (Finance Minister), and Matt Hancock, the former Health Secretary whose reputation was not badly damaged by the decision to leave politics after a very public extramarital affair and instead become the brightest moment of this political reality show.
The investigation has already exposed the true nature of Downing Street, led and epitomised by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Prior to this, everyone had centred on who was saying what to whom. And it was highly emotive: women faced sexist slurs, other public servants were insulted with subtle slurs, numerous hatreds were exposed, with much of the vulgarity coming from the testimony of Dominic Cummings, who was Johnson’s right-hand man until they split up and became sworn enemies.
While the media have immersed themselves in the intrigues of the political backroom, the more important failings – the gradual destruction of the publicly funded National Health Service (one of the few public institutions in Britain that retains its popularity) and the wider weaknesses of state structures – have not yet been given due press coverage. (That time may yet come. The investigation has been divided into five so-called modules, and only the second part is now underway).
At the start of the pandemic, Britain was mired in self-delusion. Years of austerity had robbed public services of the ability to do anything more than wriggle out of a slack system in case things went wrong. The sense of entitlement of a small group of Conservative Party politicians educated in elite schools has reinforced contrived self-confidence. And decades of denial about Britain’s real place in the world have instilled in politicians of all parties the view that Britain is still one of the global superpowers, according to Foreign Policy Magazine.
How else to explain Johnson’s approach to the pandemic, painfully recounted by several of his former advisers? Helen McNamara, the deputy head of the civil service, said with absolute equanimity that she found it hard to recall a single day when Downing Street had adhered to the emergency rules it had established, for non-compliance with which many citizens were prosecuted.
She recounted how, in a crucial period even before the first lockdown, Johnson said the United Kingdom’s “world’s best” systems would do the job better than the rest of the world. During the 12 critical days, people were allowed to go about their normal lives, even after 11 March 2020 the World Health Organisation announced that the coronavirus outbreak had become a pandemic.
Johnson declared that the disease would be no worse than swine flu. He and his officials were not interested in the experience of other countries, such as those that had dealt with the SARS virus. McNamara described how ministers smiled sceptically when told that European nations had shut down and mocked the Italians for rushing to do so.
Johnson’s characteristic sense of self-righteous boasting after Britain’s exit from the European Union seems to have become a governing principle. As early as 13 March, McNamara stormed into the Prime Minister’s office to tell him that the National Health Service would be overstretched. He said:
…I think this country is heading for a disaster. I think we are going to kill thousands of people.
Eventually, on 23 March, Johnson did announce the cessation of operations. However, by then, many people who otherwise might have been saved had already died. This is where it all started. Numerous text messages and WhatsApp messages confirmed the government’s inability to deal with the situation. Simon Case, head of the civil service, wrote to his colleague that he had “never seen a group of people less prepared to run the country”. In his view, the atmosphere of the period in Downing Street was “frenzied” and “poisonous”, Foreign Policy Magazine reports.
During the two-year pandemic, Johnson continually got the scientific evidence wrong, oscillating between despair and complacency. One of his officials’ diaries notes that he expressed the belief that the coronavirus was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people.”
Government structures were totally unprepared for a pandemic. The head of the health service recognised that the government was nowhere near the real picture of what was happening. Few senior civil servants had any scientific background.
Other failings highlighted by experts during the enquiry and beyond included the over-centralisation of the health service and the lack of consultation with regional authorities in formulating wider policy, as well as a lack of understanding of demographics. Differential impact on poorer sections of the population or ethnic communities was perceived as inevitable. Epidemiological data were inconsistently reported. There was a total shortage of hospital beds and specialised wards. The supply of personal protective equipment for health workers was in complete disarray, as was testing, and there was no tracking. Borders were not closed for many weeks. Throughout the crisis, informal procurement policies bordered on corruption: several companies linked to ministers’ friends were awarded large contracts and sometimes produced equipment that did not work.
The government had no plan for dealing with an all-consuming crisis like that of COVID-19. The problem was not just Johnson’s administrative incompetence. The British political system has for centuries been based on the so-called “good guy” theory, according to which decent people play by informal rules and do the best they can. The rules and structures are usually rejected, usually by right-wing politicians, as stiflingly un-British. At the top of government, the relationship between the Prime Minister, his cabinet and senior officials is blurred and open to interpretation by each actor. Civil servants are obliged to maintain political impartiality and not make public statements, as a result of which they are invariably blamed for the government’s mistakes. While these pressures have always existed, morale is now said to be at an all-time low, according to Foreign Policy Magazine.
Resilience is now at the forefront, and it is at the heart of preparing the opposition Labour Party, which has a consistently large lead in opinion polls, to form a government after the general election likely to be held between May and October 2024. The task at hand is daunting. Precedent-driven, make-it-up-as-you-go policies may have worked in the past (although, as always in the UK, the country’s performance is seen through rose-coloured glasses), but there is little reason to believe that they will be adequate for current and future transnational crises, from climate to migration, from natural resources to the next pandemic.
The United Kingdom’s system of governance is set to change completely. One of the key figures in a future Labour government is a senior civil servant who, shortly after submitting her report on Johnson’s “party gate” scandals, announced that she was moving to become chief of staff to the likely next Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. Her main task, which she has already begun planning, is to reorganise the structure, rights and responsibilities of government departments. This work is expected to be extensive.
The COVID-19 investigation was necessary and instructive, and perhaps entertaining, as it examined the misdemeanours of Johnson and his team. However, it is not yet enough to address the deep systemic failings of state governance.
