The EconomistMarch 21st 2020 Britain 512 tion will allow the speedy hiring of retired
and student nurses, the detention of the in-
fectious, the closure of ports and the rapid
burial of the dead.
On March 17th Mr Sunak announced a
vast economic intervention. He proposes
£330bn ($389bn) of state guarantees for
bank loans to firms, equivalent to 15% of
gdp, plus £20bn of grants and tax reliefs for
the leisure industry and small businesses.
It followed £12bn of assistance announced
in the budget. Airlines and train compa-
nies may be nationalised, said Grant
Shapps, the transport secretary. Carmak-
ers, drafted 80 years ago to assemble Spit-
fires, have been asked to make ventilators.
Landlords may not evict tenants during the
crisis. “This is not a time for ideology and
orthodoxy,” said Mr Sunak.
What state will emerge from the virus?
The courts should prevent emergency
powers granted to handle coronavirus
from being misused once normality re-
turns, says Jonathan Sumption, a historian
and former Supreme Court judge. But some
measures may prove hard to unwind. A bet-
ter deal for self-employed workers, renters
and benefit claimants could be popular.
Nationalised transport companies may
prove efficient, or hard to sell. The bbc’s
doughty schedule of emergency program-
ming is a rebuke to its opponents.
Government itself may be rehabilitated.
The drive to downsize the state was born of
the belief that the market is a more efficient
decision-maker. Pandemics challenge this.
“If the government takes huge powers and
doesn’t obviously cock it up, people come
to accept the higher and more intrusive ex-
ercise of state powers as a norm,” says Lord
Sumption. Bailed-out industries will need
to repay the favour by better training Brit-
ish workers, argues Nick Timothy, a Tory
thinker and former Number 10 aide.
The government of Clement Attlee, Mr
Churchill’s successor, offers an analogy:
Attlee redirected the wartime state to es-
tablishing free health care, public housing
and state ownership of industry. Covid-19
will combine urgent mobilisation with a
collective experience of pain, the breaking
of economic taboos and the midwifing of
once-radical ideas, argues Peter Hennessy,
a constitutional historian. The outcome
may be a more interventionist, “filled-in”
state. “The tide of ideas and the tide of prac-
ticalities have turned. A new consensus is
coming out of necessity,” he says.
The challenge for liberals, argues David
Gauke, a former treasury minister, is not to
fight the growth of the state on principle,
but to ensure that government does not re-
vert to the bad habits of producer-capture
and pork-barrel spending. The need, he ar-
gues, is to reconcile the big state that is
likely to be needed with a flourishing mar-
ket economy, and to ensure it is efficient
and effective. 7
P
eter salmonhas been cleaning cos-
tumes since he was 13. As a “small and
wiry” teenager, he was sent inside the dry-
cleaning machines to fix any hiccups. Now
67, he is trusted by London’s West End the-
atres to make everything from ball gowns
to animal outfits gleam. Every morning,
his vans come back from theatreland
stuffed with pongy garb for his team of
nine—including his brother, sister-in-law
and two nephews—to wash, press and re-
turn before the curtain goes up. He has two
boilers, just in case. “If one breaks down,
we carry on,” he says. The show must al-
ways go on.
Soon, though, Mr Salmon’s three dry-
cleaning machines and four presses will
fall as silent as the capital’s stages. A hand-
ful of London’s 240 or so theatres had al-
ready curtailed runs in an attempt to slow
the spread of covid-19. The rest followed
suit on March 16th, when Boris Johnson
recommended that Britons avoid gathering
in confined spaces. The National Theatre
has closed until April 12th. Others have
turned off their spotlights indefinitely.
Arts institutions around the world are
shutting their doors. Nowhere, though, has
a greater concentration of live theatre than
London. According to the Society of Lon-
don Theatres, a trade body, more than 15m
people saw a show in the capital last year,
just edging New York. Only last month the
society trumpeted its members’ 16th con-
secutive year of rising revenues, whichcame to £799m ($929m) in 2019. Now these
same venues—many of them elderly relics
with crimson carpets and box offices
squeezed into cubby holes—are fighting
for their survival. As David Babani, artistic
director of the Menier Chocolate Factory
theatre, notes: “It looks incredibly bleak.”
In New York Andrew Cuomo, the gover-
nor, ordered Broadway to close down for a
month on March 12th. Even 9/11 only halted
performances for two days, but Mr Cuomo
said the measures were necessary to slow
the spread of the virus.
London’s independent theatres are par-
ticularly vulnerable. The Arcola, in Dal-
ston, solicited donations as soon as it an-
nounced its temporary closure, warning
theatregoers that its future is at risk. Others
begged ticket holders not to demand re-
funds. The government has promised
grants and business-rate holidays; Arts
Council England, a quango, has pledged
emergency support.
Actors are accustomed to finding ways
to pay the bills in fallow patches between
shows, but businesses are laying off rather
than hiring. Work has also dried up for
stage hands and costume-makers. “The
wardrobe girls have got no work,” says Mr
Salmon. “They’re all really sweating.” If the
shutdown forces such people to find other
work, skills could be lost for good.
The crisis will, at least, spur innovation.
Some theatres are planning to experiment
with streaming productions online. Papa-
tango, a charity that supports new writers,
is soliciting monologues penned in self-
isolation. And Fra Fee, an actor who usually
performs to sell-out crowds at venues like
the National Theatre, says he will post vid-
eos of Irish songs online to pep others up.
“We’ve got a whole load of people sitting in
their bedrooms going nuts,” says Ben Todd,
executive director of the Arcola. “We will
figure out a way to be useful.”^7Out, out, brief candlesTheatrelandCurtains
Hopefully