The Times - UK (2020-10-14)

It’s a small point but why

can I only get medium?

Matthew Parris

Page 26

creating. He might even think that’s

his job. But it would surely be better

for him to play his part in setting the

rules rather than wait for them to be

set then suggest alternatives.

The government should consider

making him and at least one other

shadow cabinet minister members of

an emergency committee, or of the

national security council, allowing

them to take collective responsibility

and a role in the management of this

crisis. As with the Second World

War, when Labour leader Clement

Attlee served as deputy prime

minister to Churchill but a Labour

spokesman continued to challenge

the government, the oppostion could

continue to ask questions about

Covid policy but Sir Keir would be

bringing his party behind the

national effort. It is perhaps a

startling suggestion, one Sir Keir

may reject and Conservatives will

resist. I make it not because I agree

with the Labour leader but precisely

because I don’t. These are not

normal circumstances and we all

need to work together.

For imagine this: imagine that

there is no vaccine in the new year

and no new treatment; imagine the

government has to decide between

continuing this unsustainable,

economically crippling policy of

restrictions or letting go and seeing

hospitals fill and thousands die. Is it

really tenable for this to be a choice

for one party rather than the nation

as a whole?

[email protected]

Why Johnson should hug Starmer close

More people might support draconian Covid-19 restrictions if the opposition leader was involved in drawing them up

VICTORIA JONES/PA

seriously enough. Because taking it

seriously means addressing the

relationship with the opposition.

Wars it was clear that a massive

national effort to defeat an external

enemy required co-operation

between the main parties. Indeed, in

the First World War the Liberal

leader David Lloyd George and

Unionist leader Andrew Bonar Law,

politicians who could scarcely have

been more different both politically

and as people, became close

partners. This is not a war; the

government has a stable majority

and a coalition is sufficiently far from

everyone’s minds to make anyone

proposing one seem ridiculous. Yet

while we might not be engaged in

armed combat, we are in the midst of

a national calamity, requiring

massive sacrifices and restrictions of

liberty that in normal times would be

intolerable. We need unity and unity

is beginning to desert us. So surely

co-operation, short of coalition,

should now be considered.

Sir Keir Starmer cannot be

criticised for trying to pick holes in

restrictions he has had no role in

individual circumstances.

You get the point. There’s an

inexhaustible range of positions from

which to criticise the government,

many of which the leader of the

opposition, among others, has taken

advantage of.

But I’m not here to mount a

defence of the government and an

attack on the leader of the opposition.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

In addition to failures of execution

(of test and trace, for instance), the

government is failing to do all it can

to maintain broad public support for

its measures, even though the chief

medical officer for England correctly

says that such support is essential for

the measures to work.

Given the difficulty of

enforcement, controlling the virus

depends on millions voluntarily

complying with the rules, even in

circumstances where the risk to

them as individuals is small. They

have to believe the rules are fair and

that others are obeying them too.

Fostering this belief is therefore

one of the most important things the

government should be doing and one

which it is simply not taking

Boris Johnson and Sir Keir Starmer ought to be co-operating during this crisis

‘T

hese only work if

everyone buys into

them.” If a prize had been

awarded for the most

alarming thing said by

the chief medical officer during

Monday’s Downing Street press

conference, the competition would

have been stiff. But the clear winner

would have been Chris Whitty’s

statement about the need for

universal support for the

government’s measures to tackle the

spread of Covid. From his choice of

words, it’s not even clear that Chris

Whitty himself buys into them,

which isn’t a good start.

The truth is that the political

consensus essential to control the

virus is fraying. There is still broad

public support for restrictions, but a

dazzling array of opinions about

what they should be and how they

should be implemented. The

government’s scientific advisers are

warning that the restrictions may

not be enough, while lockdown

sceptics are arguing that they’re too

much. In the middle are the rest of

us with a variety of views about

whether these are the right measures

in the wrong places, or the wrong

measures in the right places, and so on.

Criticism is easy. You can propose

alternatives to any measure and

sound entirely plausible. Let me

demonstrate.

If Boris Johnson persists with

targeted measures for small areas,

you can complain that the patchwork

is almost impossible to understand

and you would be right. Yet if he

simplifies the whole thing, applying

restrictions across big regions, you

can call them the tiers of a clown and

point out that he has bundled

together places with different

infection rates. And you would be

right with that criticism, too.

If you close down schools and keep

pubs open, you’re favouring alcohol

over education. But if you keep

schools open and close down pubs,

you’re destroying the hospitality

industry while kids are at school

spreading the virus. You could keep

both open, but then what happened

to your policy of control? Or you

could close them both, but I

thought you said you were against

a lockdown?

If you keep open pubs that have

restaurants in them and close down

the ones that don’t, won’t people just

pile into the few pubs that are still

open? But if you close down all pubs,

that’s just discriminating in favour of

restaurants which aren’t attached to

pubs. So why did you do that?

You need to open up the theatres

because you can’t expect ballet

dancers to retrain as cyber

technologists, but open up the theatres

and millions will ask why you don’t

open up football stadiums, too.

And you need to be flexible

because the situation can change at

any minute, but you also mustn’t

make any U-turns because that is

confusing. It’s important to keep it

really simple and simultaneously to

accommodate everyone’s unique

Millions have to believe

that the rules are fair

and others are obeying

Daniel

Finkelstein

@dannythefink

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