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If the government carries on in the same vein, expect
to see an even greater fracturing of national unity
Andy Burnham
Boris Johnson was hit by a growing revolt over his
strategy for easing the Covid-19 lockdown last night as council leaders across
the north of England joined unions in vowing to resist plans to reopen schools
on 1 June.
Are we all in
this together? It doesn't look like it from the regions
Andy Burnham
Signs of disunity spread as a new opinion poll for the
Observer showed approval ratings for the government over its handling of the
crisis had plummeted since the prime minister dropped the “stay at home”
message and eased restrictions a week ago.
In a further sign of discord, the mayor of Greater
Manchester, Andy Burnham, writing in today’s Observer, says no one thought to
tell the leaders of the biggest towns and cities outside London in advance of
the prime minister’s decision to encourage people to go back to work last
Monday.(…)
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As public confidence in the government tumbles, the
coronavirus truce is over
Andrew
Rawnsley
Amidst mounting evidence of Downing Street’s failures,
opposition parties and critical Tories are no longer afraid to attack Boris
Johnson and his ministers for their mistakes
Sun 17 May
2020 09.00 BSTLast modified on Sun 17 May 2020 09.09 BST
In the
early chapters of the crisis, Boris Johnson found that the deadly cloud of
coronavirus came with a silver lining. He became more popular with the public
than he had ever been. As normal politics was suspended, opposition parties
declared a kind of truce and much of the nation instinctively rallied behind
its government, the prime minister’s personal approval ratings surged.
As I
remarked at the time, this was not entirely surprising and leaders in many
other countries also enjoyed a popularity windfall from the crisis. Faced with
a menace to life that is both frightening and invisible, there was a natural
yearning to believe that we are led by competent people with a sound plan for
getting us safely to the other side. That impulse was strong despite the
evidence – or maybe even because of it – that we are actually in the hands of
extremely fallible leaders flailing their way from one panic-infused day to the
next.
This urge
to “rally round the flag” suppressed much of the customary and essential cut
and thrust of politics. Argument was muted and scrutiny shut down like so many
other areas of human activity. Opposition politicians were cautious about
criticising the government for fear of putting themselves on the wrong side of
public sentiment. Conservative MPs with anxieties about Downing Street’s
strategy largely bit their tongues and pulled their punches. The prevailing
mood was one of giving ministers the benefit of the doubt. Just when it looked
like this government-friendly atmosphere might be starting to dissipate, Mr
Johnson received a further reprieve from criticism when he was struck down and
subsequently hospitalised with the virus. The opposition and much of the media
feared that it would look tasteless to kick the prime minister when he was ill.
His personal approval ratings peaked shortly after his discharge from hospital.
You will note the irony that the voters thought they liked him best as prime
minister when he had been absent from the job.
Britons now think that only the US has handled
the crisis worse than their own country
Politically
speaking, that was the “phoney war” period of the crisis. I use the past tense
because I think we can safely declare that it is over. Since Mr Johnson’s
widely derided national broadcast last Sunday, we have seen the resumption of
something much more like traditional political combat. Opposition parties are
becoming more muscular with ministers. The devolved administrations in Northern
Ireland, Wales and Scotland, which initially stayed in lockstep with the UK
government, have openly split with Downing Street to pursue divergent policies.
Conservative MPs are becoming dramatically more critical of their government’s
performance. The voters, who went into lockdown overwhelmingly of the view that
it was the right thing to do, are divided about how we ought to emerge from it.
In short, the consensus in the country is decaying and the truce between the
government and its opponents is over.
One
explanation is the lengthening charge list of failures in both planning for a
pandemic and executing an adequate response when it broke out. There is now
just too much evidence of egregious blundering to ignore, however generously
you might make allowances for ministers struggling to combat a novel disease.
Even generally loyal Conservatives have become deeply disturbed by the
unenviably high toll of fatalities. “Do you know how many people have died in
Hong Kong? Four! Just four!” exclaims one senior Tory. “People are waking up to
the fact that Britain has done really woefully.”
It is now
taken as given that there will be the mother of all public inquiries when this
is finally over. Key players at the centre of events are writing private
records of who did what when and who failed to do what when. One senior
official tells me: “We are all keeping notes.”
Ministers
have made it worse for themselves by setting targets, especially for supplies
of essential equipment and testing and tracking of infection, that they then
don’t fulfil. The Opinium poll that we publish today indicates a nine-point
plunge in public confidence in the government’s ability to handle the epidemic.
Its approval rating is now negative for the first time since the emergency
began. Opinium also reports that Britons now think that only the US has handled
the crisis worse than their own country.
The
opposition has been emboldened to become more aggressive in prosecuting the
government’s mistakes. Sir Keir Starmer has started to build a Labour narrative
that avoidable deaths have occurred because the government has been sluggish
and shambolic. Since he started to confront Mr Johnson at prime minister’s
questions, the Labour leader has played to his strengths by interrogating the
government’s performance in the forensic style of the successful barrister that
he once was. This also exploits one of Mr Johnson’s greatest weaknesses. He
isn’t good on detail. Faced with Mr Starmer’s deployment of damnatory
statistics and embarrassing quotations from official documents, the prime
minister flannels and blusters like a defendant with a threadbare alibi. Tory
MPs complain to me that he hasn’t adjusted to the fact that Mr Starmer is a
much more formidable inquisitor than his predecessor. Exasperated Tories also
ask why Number 10 isn’t doing more to rehearse the boss for these encounters.
Last week the Labour leader skewered the prime minister on the grim death toll
in care homes. “It didn’t take the brains of an archbishop to work out that he
would go on care homes,” remarks one senior Tory with personal experience of
doing PMQs. “Why wasn’t Boris properly prepared for that?”
We are also
witnessing the revival of political argument on left/right lines. In the early
period of the crisis, Labour found it hard to find an angle of attack when the
Tories were responding to the accompanying economic emergency in a Labour way.
Rishi Sunak is spending vast sums on government loans, salary subsidies and
other state-expanding measures that would normally be associated with the left.
After inviting the trade unions to help formulate the job retention scheme, the
chancellor even referred to them as “social partners”.
A few weeks
on, consensus is breaking down because there are very serious disputes about
how quickly to ease out of lockdown. Most of the cabinet, and an even greater
proportion of Tory MPs, are desperate for a rapid lifting of restrictions to
revive the economy. Business largely agrees. Labour and its trade union allies
are more wary and place the greatest emphasis on ensuring that workers are
sufficiently protected.
This has
sparked a classic clash between rival interests and ideologies. One of the
starkest is between the government and teachers. The largest teaching union
uses the word “reckless” to describe ministers’ plans for a partial reopening
of schools in June. The education secretary bites back that the union is
“scaremongering”. No cosy, consensus-seeking talk about “social partners”
there.
Tory MPs joined the ridicule of the prime
minister’s confused and confusing broadcast
Another
sign that politics is returning to fractious business as usual is the rising
tension within the Conservative party. The mask of unity that the government
managed to maintain in the early weeks is fracturing. Cabinet ministers are
letting it be known that they are furious about the lack of prior consultation
by Downing Street before it makes key announcements. Tory MPs joined the
ridicule of the prime minister’s confused and confusing broadcast. When it was
over, one former cabinet minister turned to his wife and said: “What has he
just said? What did that mean?” Two-thirds of the public agree that the
government’s new rules are not clear. Another former cabinet minister says:
“Boris has had his worst week of the crisis. He lost control of the messaging.”
I’m told that a WhatsApp group used by about 250 Conservative MPs seethes with
“sulphurous feelings” towards the cabinet.
This return
to something resembling pre-crisis politics is not welcome to ministers. Like
all governments, they’d prefer it if everyone shut up and did as they were
told. After his wounding in parliament over the care homes epidemic, the prime
minister complained to Mr Starmer: “The public expect us to work together.”
That’s not in the job description of the leader of the opposition. He is
supposed to be invigilating the government. The clue is in his title.
When
political life was in a version of lockdown, Mr Johnson and his ministers were
not being properly held to account. That absence of challenge did not make them
a better government, but a worse one.
Much of
life will remain disrupted for many people for a long time to come, but
politics is returning to a kind of normality. Good thing too.
•Andrew
Rawnsley is Chief Political Commentator of the Observer
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As lockdown consensus unravels, Boris Johnson
divides nation and party
The
Observer
Coronavirus
outbreak
The prime minister’s new policy left Scotland, Wales
and England’s regions in a battle for money and control – and gave the Tory
party a huge ideological challenge
Toby Helm,
Tom Wall and Kevin McKenna
Boris Johnson’s televised message was watched with
alarm in some parts of the UK.
\Only a few
weeks ago Boris Johnson was invoking the spirit of Winston Churchill when he
called on the nation to unite in the fight against the coronavirus. As he took
the momentous decision to order the closure of pubs, restaurants and many shops
on 23 March, much of the United Kingdom seemed ready to respond and rally round
the flag at a time of crisis. Similar lockdowns were ordered in Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland. Rival political leaders offered to abandon hostilities
and seek consensus. There was talk of forming a government of national unity.
Johnson’s ratings soared in the polls as voters heard the call to join a great
collective effort. “We will get through this together,” he told the country.
That was
then. Last week the short-lived unity fractured, and trust in the government in
London started to haemorrhage away. Political leaders in Edinburgh, Cardiff and
Belfast began to resist and go their own ways in the fight against Covid-19. In
England, open dissent started to break out in the regions. This weekend some
council leaders in England have vowed to defy the government at Westminster by
refusing to re-open schools on 1 June, as Johnson wants, because of fears for
their pupils’ and teachers’ safety. The R rate (of the virus’s reproduction) is
too high and the move too risky, they say, echoing the views of worried
teaching unions. Yesterday Hartlepool council issued a statement: “Given that
coronavirus cases locally continue to rise, Hartlepool borough council has been
working with schools and we have agreed they will not reopen on Monday 1 June.
Whilst we recognise the importance of schools reopening, we want to be
absolutely clear that we will be taking a measured and cautious approach to
this.”
The worry
in northern parts of the country where the R rate is rising is that there could
be a surge in cases that would then spread nationally. As Andy Burnham, the
mayor of Greater Manchester writes in this newspaper today, reflecting on the
past week: “Life has changed and, suddenly, everything feels very fractious.”
The
unravelling of consensus began with Johnson’s televised address to more than
27m viewers from Downing Street, in which he announced a number of minor
relaxations of lockdown rules and dropped his government’s “stay at home”
message in favour of a new slogan – “stay alert”. People in the UK would, he
said, be allowed to travel more freely, go outside for unlimited amounts of
exercise, play tennis and golf, and meet someone outside from another household
so long as they stayed two metres apart.
Those in
charge in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland were both dismayed that Johnson
had abandoned the “stay at home” slogan and furious at the lack of consultation.
“There has been dialogue and it has always been in a convivial atmosphere,”
said the SNP’s leader at Westminster, Ian Blackford. “But the problem is that
this has been after decisions have been taken. It seemed on Sunday night as if
Johnson thought he was announcing policy for the whole United Kingdom.”
If that was
the case, the prime minister knows better now. The devolved administrations
have flatly rejected Johnson’s strategy and warned that they will continue with
the ‘stay at home’ guidelines. Ahead of what is expected to be a spell of good
weather over the next few days, Adam Price, the leader of Plaid Cymru – a party
whose raison d’etre is Welsh independence – warned that English people would be
pulled up by the police if they ventured into his country to visit beauty spots
such as Snowdonia.
“Let’s not
beat about the bush,” Price said. “If you drove into Wales from England at the
moment without a legitimate excuse you would get arrested. Many people would
not have thought that it was even possible but it is the reality on the
ground.”
Snowdonia
national park’s chief executive, Emyr Williams, said wardens and the police
would be working to enforce Welsh rules. “We’ve got 15 wardens patrolling. We
have also got North Wales police patrolling. They have issued 70 fines so far
and they have turned away many more before they even reach the park.”
The first
minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon, also spoke of
repelling the English if they tried to cross the border to her country without
good reason. Appearing against a “stay at home” backdrop, Sturgeon said: “If
you are coming into Scotland for reasons that are not covered by those
essential purposes then you potentially would be in breach of the law.”
As disunity
and confusion reign, the government’s poll ratings have nosedived. Since last
weekend, approval ratings for Johnson’s government’s handling of Covid-19 have
dropped by nine percentage points. For the first time since Opinium began
polling on Covid-19 for the Observer, more people disapprove of the
government’s handling of the crisis than approve. In late March the government
had a net approval rating of plus 42. Now it is -3.
Prof Robert
Ford of Manchester University says that whereas entering the lockdown seemed
momentous, it was in fact easier, and less politically divisive, than
extricating ourselves from it is proving to be. “We went into the lockdown with
a sense of national unity, but now it looks like we will be coming out of it
with sharper political arguments than ever,” he says.
As the past
week has made clear, the crucial battles – for power, money and control as
lockdown is eased – will now be fought between London, the devolved
administrations and England’s regions and local councils. The argument for a
more decentralised Britain has been unleashed in earnest by Covid-19.
Prof Tony
Travers, an expert in local government at the London School of Economics, says
the UK’s highly centralised system of government, and its NHS, do not respond
well to crises and challenges that require flexible, fast and effective local
responses.
“It does
appear that some smaller countries and federally structured nations like
Germany seem to have been more flexible than the somewhat monolithic approach
in Britain.
But,
Travers added, a UK version would have to also involve properly funding local
government, whose financial resources had been cut by over 40% since 2010. The
cuts had also severely impeded their ability to respond to the current crisis.
For a Tory
party traditionally committed to low taxes, which has relentlessly squeezed
public services and local authorities in the past, giving the regions their
head is an ideological challenge. But a second, even more severe, bout of
austerity to pay the Covid-19 bill will not satisfy the many new Conservative
MPs in the Midlands and North who won Johnson his majority at the election in
December. They will also be aware that, for Keir Starmer’s Labour party,
championing the regions may offer a way to re-connect with traditional areas of
support that abandoned the party in the general election.
Former home
secretary Amber Rudd said she expected a “big debate” on the way forward and
Johnson to address some of the challenges in a big, defining speech,
imminently.
The former
cabinet minister Damian Green, chairman of the 100-strong One Nation caucus of
Tory MPs, said his party had to learn the lessons of Covid-19 and respond in
the light of the strains it had created. He said: “The time is right for one
nation Conservative policies of supporting public services to help the
disadvantaged and spreading power out from the centre to local people.”
Ford agreed
that a big Tory battle was in prospect, asking: “Will home counties fiscal
conservatives be willing to swallow more taxes, more government, more freedom
for local councils? For much of the past three years our politics has been
driven by a civil war within the Tory party. This may end up being true again,
but this time the war will be fought on a different front. It will be a fiscal
civil war instead of a Europe civil war.”
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