Monday 26 April 2021

Bringing Up the Bodies

Boris Johnson's calamitous couple of weeks continues. "No more fucking lockdowns – let the bodies pile high in their thousands!" is what the Daily Mail led with, and politics today has been about nothing but. Asked earlier for her opinion, Nicola Sturgeon said "I don't find this impossible to believe, on the contrary it's all too believable." Yes, because Johnson has a thing for crass, off-the-cuff remarks. Remember when he referred to the government's emergency efforts at procuring ventilators as "Operation Last Gasp"? And discussing how Sirte in Libya could just be like Dubai "once the bodies are cleared away?"

Did he really say it? The normally pliant and pliable Robert Peston affirms the story, digging up a couple more whisperers who are definitely not and have nothing to do with Dominic Cummings. The truth, however, doesn't matter at this point. Everyone knows Johnson's persistent foot-in-mouth disease makes it believable. It has enough truthiness, and that's what counts in politics. It's the sort of background music no party would like playing in the background.

Meanwhile, the persistence of Tory corruption has finally, it seems, taken a lump out of their poll ratings. The Evening Standard reports how they've lost five points in the space of the month. No consolation for Labour alas, who are also down by one. Could the Mail's scoop push the ratings down further while the rows about the PM's flat and everything else rumbles on?

For the first time, there is a real danger here for Johnson. The resilience of the Tories has been thanks to their politically astute management of the crisis. At each step, the government have keenly emphasised the lengths they've gone to to ensure supply of equipment, bed capacity, doses of vaccine, and the "unprecedented" emergency measures they've introduced. Measures, the more informed reader will know, that were pushed by Jeremy Corbyn before the Tories adopted them. Their visible activism was accompanied at all times by their concerted effort at depoliticising the crisis. Despite the late lockdowns, the carnage in our care homes, the collapse of test and trace, Johnson and co. have successfully taken the political sting out of their disastrous handling. They've managed this by turning the responsibility for infection onto the British people themselves. Transmission of the disease and all that follows is bad luck, an unfortunate individual happenstance. Or because one was acting irresponsibly and not following the guidelines. The viral footage of Hyde Park, of last summer's parties in the woods, and even a certain trip to Barnard Castle hammered home the same message. The politicians weren't as fault, even while they refused to mandate the closure of many unnecessary workplaces, it was a question of conduct and fortune. And, unfortunately, the official opposition have have allowed the Tories to play this merry game. Hopeless.

Why are the warning signs flashing? Because Johnson's indiscreet outburst threatens to blow open the entirety of the strategy. It's one thing to punt out a line about following the science and pleading good faith mistakes on the timing of the lockdowns. That helps the government escape responsibility. But if Johnson is found out for saying thousands of dead are a price worth paying for avoiding another lockdown, then the whole edifice of the pandemic looks less an honest response to unprecedented difficulties and more a deliberate contrivance riddled with hubris and fault. Deaths were preventable and Johnson did not care. True, by itself it might not be damaging, but waiting in the wings is a vengeful Dominic Cummings. He has the receipts showing he pushed for earlier lockdowns, and was knocked back. With Johnson's comments coming to light, a howling tempest is brewing and one that might, might induce a few cracks in the impervious electoral bloc Johnson has relied on.

The second question then arises: why is this happening? For a Tory party that has been more or less united, apart from a few tantrums in and around Number 10, there is no crisis. The poll lead is solid, the majority isn't going anywhere, and Labour are more interested in owning its left than attacking the government. Since the corruption story broke the press have gleefully piled in and driven the sleaze allegations. It is perhaps a reminder to the Prime Minister that his electoral success depended in large part on the spade work they'd done prepping his electorate over decades, and that they can go elsewhere if they chose. Perhaps some sections of the press are upset about Johnson's programme. Before all this broke, common were the "concerns" of the anonymous backbenchers worried about his breaks from the orthodoxy and his arbitrary authoritarianism. And this dovetails with thwarted ambitions. For as long as Johnson looks impregnable, what happens to the men and women in a hurry? Michael Gove is entirely sidelined, and yet remains a wholly owned subsidary of Rupert Murdoch. Yesterday's men like Sajid Javid and Jeremy Hunt still fancy their chances but are smarting at the slights Johnson slapped them with, and while everyone is hiding Liz Truss - now a big favourite among the diminishing party faithful - is putting herself forward to fight the good fights. Johnson's crisis is opportunity for them. And should it drag on into the summer, the party and its backers will likely conclude the incumbent is pointedly not as fit as a butcher's dog. The door to the backyard might open, and with a final pat of the head Johnson could be led outside.

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4 comments:

Blissex said...

«But if Johnson is found out for saying thousands of dead are a price worth paying for avoiding another lockdown, then the whole edifice of the pandemic looks less an honest response to unprecedented difficulties and more a deliberate contrivance riddled with hubris and fault.»

I cannot understand the current outrage: death rates greater than zero are obviously very acceptable to most voters, be them on the road, building tunnels, because of flu in "normal" years, etc.

For me the current outrage is just yet another distraction, yet another example of the wholly reaganista/thatcherite "individualist" framing of lockdowns/vaccines adopted by both Conservatives and New New Labour.

The real issue is not deaths-vs-jobs, lockdown hard-vs-soft, but the ideological avoidance of a public health response to the epidemic, based on test-trace-isolate, which has resulted in negligible sickeness rates and GDP issues in the non-reaganista/thatcherite countries that adopted it, because the elites of those (capitalist) countries don't feel obliged to uphold the truthiness that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help’”.

George Carty said...

Blissex,

Actually there very much is a trade-off between deaths and jobs, once you remove the "zero Covid" countries from your analysis. And the factor that determines whether "zero Covid" is possible in any given country is "can we impose 14-day quarantine on 100% of those who enter the country, including our own returning citizens?"

Australia and New Zealand are isolated enough that they are capable of sealing their borders to the necessary extent. Taiwan is too, aided by the fact that it is in a state of war with its corresponding "mainland".

It would not be possible for mainland European countries to do that: if they tried to impose Australian-style border policies then people would sneak back in regardless on a myriad of minor back roads. And even the UK's island status isn't particular significant, as the Channel is narrow enough that it can be crossed with only a rudimentary level of seamanship, as demonstrated by all those illegal immigrants in makeshift boats.

Plus there's the issue of trade: Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand did all their international trade by easily-securable means. Container ship crews need never leave their vessels, while air crews can be isolated within the airport until they fly out again.

That isn't the case for the UK, which depends on about 10,000 trucks a day crossing the Channel. Setting up a system where all trucks change drivers at the border to ensure no persons cross it (as China and Vietnam did at their common border) would be prohibited given the volume of trucks involved.

Blissex said...

«And the factor that determines whether "zero Covid" is possible in any given country is "can we impose 14-day quarantine on 100% of those who enter the country, including our own returning citizens?" Australia and New Zealand are isolated enough that they are capable of sealing their borders [...]»

The point about borders is ridiculous: China and Vietnam have enormous and porous borders and yet they have very low sickness and death rates. The key is not closing the borders, it is keeping the borders and the domestic areas fully open with no restrictions but with test-trace-isolate both at the borders and internally.

The choices are simple: isolate *everybody* and seal the borders, and accept high rates of sickness and ruin several sectors from entertainment to universities, or test everybody and isolate only those who test positive and their contacts, and keep going. Since isolating *everybody* is a problem, that becomes a half-baked policy, which however is compatible with thatcherism.

«It would not be possible for mainland European countries to do that: if they tried to impose Australian-style border policies then people would sneak back in regardless on a myriad of minor back roads.»

That is also ridiculous: Australia, China and Vietnam are huge to enormous countries, and yet they have have had no need to seal their internal borders, never mind their external ones.
If there is an issue with mainland Europe is that there are many different jurisdictions, which is like China, but without a strong federal level like China has. But given that there is the EU, that could be done at the EU level (but may need some new treaty to allow coordination probably, but I think the Schengen treaties already cover that). But that excuse does not apply to the UK.

«That isn't the case for the UK, which depends on about 10,000 trucks a day crossing the Channel.»

The truck traffic can be handled in many ways, including testing the drivers, or tracing and testing their contacts otherwise, the goal is to minimize the need to trace and isolate, rather than to completely eliminate it by sealing completely the border:

https://www.antwerpxl.com/2021/03/10/port-of-dover-post-brexit-freight-traffic-exceeds-300000-trucks-since-1-january/
“Hauliers travelling to France that have spent less than 48 hours in the UK no longer require a Covid-19 test prior to departure.”

According to this during 2020 in the 2nd quarter there were 446k vehicles travelling, so around 4,000-5,000 per day, and that can be easily handled, given a will and funding, or just cut, as in the several weeks after the end of the transition period, and "the economy" survived:

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/road-goods-vehicles-travelling-to-europe

George Carty said...

Actually Australia, China and Vietnam have all sealed their external borders (and Australia its internal borders too) – there's a reason why the #strandedaussies hashtag exists!

Perhaps you have an issue with the UK's current half-hearted approach to the borders (which is a great way of pandering to racism and xenophobia, but won't suffice to actually keep out any vaccine-busting variant if one were to exist) and thus decided for some reason to deny that border control is important at all?

No country in Europe has managed to make test/trace/isolate really work to contain this virus – for it to actually be effective you need an essentially Orwellian level of surveillance, as seen in China and South Korea. And South Korea is still nowhere near "fully open". There's a reason why (after Victoria's quarantine hotel screw-up last August) all Australian states bar NSW abandoned containment in favour of complete elimination.