The Economist - USA (2020-11-07)

50 TheEconomistNovember 7th 2020

1

“F

rankly, i’ve had enough of lock-

down,” declared Nigel Farage in a vid-

eo shot on November 1st in the bar of Do-

nald Trump’s Washington, dc, hotel. The

man responsible for Brexit, who was visit-

ing America to support his friend’s cam-

paign, has announced that he will be

launching a new political party, Reform

uk, to contest local elections next spring. It

will advocate letting covid-19 circulate

freely among the young and healthy, while

the old and vulnerable shield themselves.

The Tory party once dismissed Mr Far-

age’s followers as a gaggle of golf-club

bores and pub cranks. The problem for Bo-

ris Johnson is that, once again, Britain’s

club houses and bars are closed, and a

growing slice of their Conservative-voting

patrons are unhappy about it. On Novem-

ber 5th, the government instigated a sec-

ond national lockdown, which will be in

place until at least December 2nd.

Mr Johnson had vowed to avoid that at

all costs, and had wanted to pursue a series

of tiered regional restrictions. He changed

course on October 31st, after the govern-

ment’s scientists warned that on its current

trajectory the disease would kill up to

4,000 people a day in the week before

Christmas. That, Mr Johnson said, would

be a “moral and medical disaster”, which

would see hospitals filled and doctors

choosing whom to save.

Ministers scoff at Mr Farage’s many

comebacks. He is “like Frank Sinatra”, says

one. But he is hard to ignore, for he has

traumatised and transformed the Conser-

vative Party in the past decade. First, as

leader of the ukIndependence Party, he

turbocharged the question of eumember-

ship by fusing it to immigration, and com-

pelled David Cameron to hold the 2016 ref-

erendum. Then, as Theresa May’s exit

treaty became stuck in Parliament, he

launched the Brexit Party, which swiftly

overtook the Tories in the polls, prompting

them to dump her and her deal. His method

is to harass the party through local and

European elections, thus panicking the

leadership into adopting his policies.

Mr Johnson was chosen to replace Mrs

May because Tories believed that only he

could suppress Mr Farage and unite the

party under the Brexit banner. The Tory vil-

lage has been rebuilt as a citadel against fu-

ture assaults. Europhiles and fiscal disci-

plinarians were given the boot. Its mission

is to deliver Brexit, and to hold together the

coalition that Mr Johnson built. Yet Mr Far-

age can spy cracks in the fortress walls.

On November 4th, 34 Tories voted

against the new restrictions. They abhor

the lockdown as a violation of civil liber-

ties, a destroyer of jobs and a humiliating

reversal. Ministers fear that in future they

will need Labour support to pass covid-19

rules—a sign of impotence that last year’s

election victory was meant to banish.

The splits on covid-19 are shallower and

less treacherous than on Europe, which af-

flicted the party for three decades. But they

run along similar lines. The lockdown crit-

ics include Iain Duncan Smith and Steve

Baker, leading Brexiteers. Mr Farage will get

enthusiastic support from the Daily Tele-

graph, a Brexity newspaper, and the right-

wing commentariat. Each side has its fa-

voured scientists. The polarisation makes

it increasingly hard to forge a national con-

sensus on epidemiology, just as it was on

European trade policy.

Lockdown scepticism is a minority pur-

Populism

Look who’s back

The second lockdown has divided the Tories and given birth to a new party which

seeks to torment the government and push it to the right

Britain

51 RemembranceDay

52 Bagehot: Labour’s Captain Foresight

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