The Economist - USA (2020-05-16)

44 TheEconomistMay 16th 2020

1

A

slide trackingBritain’s coronavirus

death toll against other countries’ had

been a fixture of the daily government

press conference. When it was first pro-

duced, on March 30th, it showed the Un-

ited Kingdom trailing Spain, Italy, France

and America in a grisly league table. On

May 9th, the last time it was displayed, Brit-

ain was the highest in Europe. It has now

disappeared from the briefings.

As The Economistwent to press, the con-

firmed British death toll stood at 33,186, the

second highest reported figure in the world

behind America (see chart overleaf ). Brit-

ain is fourth for fatalities as a share of pop-

ulation. On May 13th, Boris Johnson told

the House of Commons that although the

death count was “deeply, deeply horrify-

ing”, it would be premature to make inter-

national comparisons until the figures of

excess deaths were released, which would

capture cases where covid-19 was not re-

corded as a cause of death. The Economist’s

calculations of excess deaths per 100,000

people in Britain, Belgium, France, the

Netherlands, Spain and Sweden puts Brit-

ain at the top; data for America and Italy are

not available.

Britain is not alone in experiencing

shortages of protective equipment, a defi-

cient testing regime and uncontrolled out-

breaks of the virus in care homes. It is too

soon to say how far the death toll is attrib-

utable to government missteps, demogra-

phy or geography. Yet to many foreign ob-

servers, Britain’s death toll serves as

confirmation of deeper-rooted problems: a

political culture of hubris and exceptional-

ism; atrophied public services; inequality

and poor health.

At home, the crisis has become a politi-

cal risk for Mr Johnson. His announcement

on May 10th of tentative steps to unwind

the lockdown did not go well. Only a third

of voters said they understood what the

new “Stay alert, control the virus” slogan

asked of them. Teachers’ unions criticised

plans to start to reopen schools on June 1st

as unsafe. In London the Tube and some

buses were busy, despite Mr Johnson’s plea

for returning workers to avoid public tran-

sport. Mr Johnson’s poll ratings remain

high, but have fallen back in recent weeks,

and a poll by YouGov on May 12th showed

Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour Party’s new

leader, more popular than him.

Voters still approve of the government’s

handling of the crisis, by a net 12 points ac-

cording to a survey released on May 9th by

Opinium, a pollster. But the figure is down

from 21 points two weeks earlier, and re-

spondents increasingly think foreign gov-

ernments have handled things better. In a

poll published on April 25th they judged

Britain’s government to have performed

worse than those of China, Germany,

France, South Korea, Japan and Australia.

By May 5th, Italy and Spain had joined that

list. Only America gets lower marks of ten

countries polled. Voters who supported

Brexit tend to take a rosier view of Britain’s

Britain’s international reputation

How others see us

At home and abroad, Britain’s handling of covid-19 is drawing

unfavourable comparisons

Britain

45 Toothacheina pandemic

46 Migrantcareworkers

46 Proppinguptheeconomy

Also in this section

— Bagehot is away

Read more from this week’s Britain section:

Economist.com/Britain