52 Britain The EconomistMarch 28th 2020
I
n the pastfew weeks politics has retreated to its core function:
protecting the tribe from death and destruction. The govern-
ment has adopted the slogan “Save lives” along with “Protect the
nhs” and “Stay home”. The army is on standby. In the coming
weeks thousands of people will die before their time; those who
survive may confront a 1930s-style depression.
The atmosphere in the Westminster village reflects these grim
facts. Boris Johnson gets through 20-hour days by munching veg-
an food, perhaps in the belief that plants are good for the immune
system. Aides are sleeping on sofas and old camp beds. Having re-
stricted the number of mps allowed into the chamber so that they
could sit two metres apart, the House of Commons has risen early
and will remain closed for at least a month. The mother of parlia-
ments is now a sepulchre.
Covid-19 is changing the way Britain governs itself in broader
ways, too. Two kinds of politics that have dominated the country
for the past decade have vanished. The first is the politics of revo-
lution. Britain has been turned upside down by the successful
campaign, driven by activists such as Dominic Cummings, the
prime minister’s chief aide, to wrench Britain away from Europe.
Since his election victory in December, Mr Johnson has set about
implementing his grand ambitions to rewire the country for a
post-Brexit future, shifting power from London to the provinces,
pouring money into infrastructure and completing Brexit negotia-
tions in double-quick time.
The second is politics as performance or spectacle. Politics has
always been performance art to some degree: look at the weekly
bear-pit that is prime minister’s questions or the humiliating ritu-
als of general elections. But performance has triumphed over sub-
stance in recent years. Leading politicians have become celebri-
ties. Mr Johnson built his political career by appearing on
television and turning his first name and blond hair into a global
brand. Politics has also been supercharged by the culture wars. Can
people with penises reasonably be described as women? Should
student groups be allowed to prevent luminaries from voicing
controversial opinions at universities? These were the great issues
that got people’s blood boiling only a few weeks ago.
The abrupt change of political direction has produced a badcase of whiplash, with Britain adjusting to these new circum-
stances more slowly than most continental countries, and old
habits surviving, discordantly, into the new era. Politics suddenly
requires a different sort of person—hence the disappearance of Mr
Cummings and the appearance by Mr Johnson’s side of medical
and scientific experts. And it requires a different style of presenta-
tion from the one that Mr Johnson was comfortable with, focusing
on statesmanship rather than celebrity and reassurance rather
than disruption.
Downing Street’s communications operation has been particu-
larly slow to adjust: messages have sometimes been confused (Mr
Johnson told people to stand two metres apart while obviously
standing closer than that to his neighbour) and have been couched
in high-falutin’ language about “herd immunity” and “social dis-
tancing”. Mr Johnson has also indulged in his natural exuberance
by, for example, suggesting that the search for more ventilators
should be christened “Operation Last Gasp”. But things are improv-
ing. Isaac Levido, the campaigner who won the election for Mr
Johnson, has been brought in to impose more discipline in Down-
ing Street “messaging”. The prime minister rose to the seriousness
of the occasion in announcing a lockdown to the nation on March
23rd. His address was watched by 27m people.
If Mr Johnson is to come out of this well, he will need to make
further changes. There is growing support for creating a national
government—a veritable “covid-coalition”—modelled on Win-
ston Churchill’s national government during the second world
war, making Sir Keir Starmer deputy prime minister if he wins the
Labour leadership as expected and drawing on talented mps from
across the political spectrum. The risk is that the prime minister
would sacrifice the tools of party discipline and might find himself
presiding over a cabinet of big egos and discordant voices. A na-
tional government may be a step too far, but there is a strong case
for replacing Mr Johnson’s Brexit government with a One Nation
Tory government.
The current cabinet is one of the weakest in post-war history
precisely because its members were chosen for their enthusiasm
for pushing through the Brexit project. Some of them—such as Do-
minic Raab, the foreign secretary, and Priti Patel, the home secre-
tary—are far too divisive to command national respect. The fact
that Mr Raab, an abrasive Brexit ultra, is currently Mr Johnson’s
“designated survivor” should he fall victim to covid-19 is particu-
larly worrying. Others—such as Gavin Williamson, the education
secretary, and Liz Truss, the trade secretary—are over-promoted.
Mr Johnson needs to draw on all the talents within his party: it is
foolish that Jeremy Hunt, Britain’s longest-serving health secre-
tary, doesn’t have a cabinet position. The prime minister also
needs to choose a more acceptable figure to replace him if he be-
comes ill—perhaps the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, whose perfor-
mance has been exemplary, but who may already have enough on
his plate, or perhaps a newly promoted Mr Hunt, who, after all,
came second in the Conservative Party leadership race.
Mr Johnson’s career has always been defined by his powerful
sense of history (hence his obsession with Churchill) and his ruth-
lessness in achieving his goals (hence his willingness to break
with friends and even family in order to achieve Brexit). He needs
to realise that covid-19, not Brexit, will determine how he goes
down in history. And he needs to apply the same ruthlessness to
clearing out the Brexit cabinet that he applied to clearing out the
government that he inherited from Theresa May. He should not try
to fight today’s battles with yesterday’s weapons. 7Bagehot The new politics
Forget the flummery: politics is now a life-or-death business