The Economist - USA (2020-10-17)

48 Britain The EconomistOctober 17th 2020

2 Conservative mps are angry that the gov-

ernment has imposed new measures with-

out debate in Parliament. They want it to

outline a plan for living with the virus in

the long run. On October 13th, 42 of them

voted against a number of restrictions, in-

cluding a 10pm curfew on pubs. Chris

Green, mpfor Bolton West and Atherton,

resigned as a government aide, saying the

“attempted cure is worse than the disease”.

These mps are supported by trio of right-

wing newspapers—the Daily Telegraph, the

Daily Mailand the Sun—that have the gov-

ernment’s scientists in their cross-hairs.

There is also a growing divide between

London and the regions. Mr Johnson’s ad-

ministration is good at combative cam-

paigns, but lazy on the basic work of con-

sensus-building. The new measures are

opposed by a new generation of directly-

elected mayors, who argue they have been

imposed without consultation, don’t re-

flect the reality of where and how the virus

is spreading, and come with too little aid to

support shuttered businesses. Andy Burn-

ham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, ar-

gues that the restrictions designed by peo-

ple in London are misdirected and

ineffective. “They can only see numbers

and blobs on the map, whereas we see

names, communities, the full picture of

what happens on the ground.”

The mayors are also critical of the cen-

tralised test-and-trace system, run from

Whitehall with the support of contractors.

They argue local government public health

teams would have done the job better for

less money. The public is less likely to com-

ply with a regime that their municipal lead-

ers don’t support, says Dan Jarvis, the

mayor of the Sheffield City Region.

Mr Johnson faces this rising opposition

with diminished authority. His approval

ratings rose after the initial lockdown to a

netof40%;theyhavesincesunktominus

22%.Areputationforincompetencedogs

thegovernment.

Theprimeminister’selectionvictoryin

December ought to have banished the

memoryof Theresa May’s hobbled pre-

miershipandrenderedhimdominant,but

inParliamentonOctober12th,wearilyde-

fendingasmallpatchofgroundagainst

critics,estrangedfrombothhisexpertad-

visersandhisbackbenchers,heboremore

thana passingresemblancetohisprede-

cessor.Werehenowstilla newspapercol-

umnist, he would doubtless be among

thosedenouncingtheflailingprimemin-

ister,thegloomstergovernmentscientists

andlossofliberties,muchasheputhis

nametoallmannerofeccentricfixestothe

Brexitdeadlockwhenit wasopportune.

ThefirstwavecostMrJohnsona great

dealofhispoliticalcapital.Ifthegovern-

ment’srecorddoesnotimprove,thesec-

ondcouldexhaustit.^7

Sheffield

Liverpool

London

Harrogate

Manchester

Sunderland

Tier1 (medium)

Currentrestrictions

remaininplace

Tier2 (high)

Additionalbanon

mixinghouseholds

indoors

Tier3 (veryhigh)

Additionalbanon

mixinghouseholds

indoors,pubs/bars

closedandtravel

outsidearea

restricted

Source: Department of Health and Social Care

Moved to tiers

England, covid-19 alert levels

October 14th 2020

J

ames dauntused to grimace when an-

other dreary politician’s memoirs hit the

shelves. “You would unpack the worthy

brick that came from the publishers and

then three months later you would put

them all back in a box to go back whence

they came,” says the boss of Waterstones, a

bookstore chain. The minutiae of long-ago

cabinet meetings left the nation strangely

unmoved. “Norman Fowler’s memoirs

didn’t race out the door.”

What the punters wanted were celebrity

tell-alls. They devoured books by or about

boy bands, athletes and people such as Ka-

tie Price, a model famous for being famous.

A writer of “bucketloads” of these books

says he twice bashed them out in 20 days.

Though the biggest celebrity biogra-

phies still outsell other non-fiction, the

genre is on the wane. At their peak, in 2008,

celebrity titles made up 55% of the biogra-

phy and memoirs market, according to

Nielsen, a research outfit, bringing in £77m

($144m). That dwindled to £43m in 2019, or

slightly more than a third of the market.

Over the same period, biographies of poli-

ticians and historical figures climbed from

less than a tenth of the market to nearly a

sixth, making about £19m last year.

By the time the latest title, a life of Boris

Johnson by the serial biographer Tom Bow-

er, was published on October 15th, it was al-

ready climbing up Amazon’s pre-order

charts. “Diary of an mp’s Wife”, a gobsmack-

ingly indiscreet behind-the-scenes ac-

count of David Cameron’s government by

Sasha Swire, is in high demand, too. “Jeep-

ers,” exclaims Mr Daunt. “We’re ordering

more and more and more.”

Three factors explain the celebrity re-

cession. First, thanks to social media the

world already knows all about many puta-

tive subjects. Second, publications which

once fought for first dibs on a book’s gossip

are poorer than they were. Newspapers that

once paid £150,000 might now pay

£50,000. A celebrity magazine that would

have shelled out £30,000 would now offer

£1,000 or so. Third, retailers are fewer and

pickier than they once were. The record

shops that once flogged thousands of pop

biographies have closed down, and book-

shops are run differently. Mr Daunt gives

managers the power to stock their

branches, rather than stuffing them with

centrally chosen biographies. “The days are

gone that you could give a celebrity £1m to

have a book ghost-written that you knew

would be piled up from one end of the land

to the other,” he says.

As for the boom in political books, it is

less that Britons have grown more cerebral

than that politics has become more enter-

taining. Mr Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn,

the former Labour leader, are unusual char-

acters. Britons are gripped by Donald

Trump and the reaction against him. Books

by Mary Trump, the president’s niece, John

Bolton, his former national security advis-

er, and James Comey, an ex-head of the fbi,

have all sold well. Michelle Obama’s auto-

biography kept the tills busy and her hus-

band’s latest book, published next month,

is tipped to be a Christmas bestseller. Dys-

functional politics may make for an un-

happy world, but publishers, at least, have

smiles on their faces. 7

Political books are dislodging

celebrity ones

The business of biography

Aide memoir

Sasha Swire laid a bestseller