Tag Archives: coronavirus

By the time we come out of the Coronavirus epidemic, the context of British politics may well look very different.  It’s hard yet to tell how far the dominant narratives will have changed, but some shifts are already occurring – many positive for Liberals, some not so easy to adjust to.  Positive changes include:-

• Recognition that government is a complex, and constitutional, process, not a matter for populist slogans. Boris Johnson on March 16^th said that Britain’s strength as ‘a mature liberal democracy’ was that we could manage to bring together broad national consent to difficult measures to combat the epidemic.  That’s a phrase he would never have used 3 months ago, when he was talking of ‘the will of the people’ and ‘people versus Parliament’.  This will make it harder for Right-wingers to push through the curbs on parliamentary and judicial scrutiny they hoped for through the planned commission on the constitution.
• The libertarian drive to shrink government is over. The PM accepts that active government is essential, including economic planning and industrial strategy.  6 months ago Rishi Sunak was repeating the Taxpayers Alliance mantra that there’s a ‘natural’ ceiling to government revenue and spending at around 37% of GNP.  Now he’s become a full-blown Keynesian, mobilising public spending to support economy and society.
• International cooperation has trumped nationalist assertion. Viruses don’t respect national sovereignty; sharing information with other governments, their health services and research laboratories, are self-evidently needed to combat the pandemic.  Johnson’s conversion here is reluctant and incomplete; he’s still committed to leaving the European Medicines Agency (risking delay in access to new drugs) and the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (set up with UK support in the wake of the Sars epidemic).  But we can mobilise this argument against our Vote Leave government.
• Experts have regained the government’s (and the public’s?) respect. The PM has to listen to the Chief Medical Officer and others, and restrain his instinct to crack jokes about serious and complex topics.  Experts are ‘the liberal elite’ whom populists denigrate, who look at evidence rather than gut instincts.
• The idea of ‘the public interest’ is back; and of civil servants as working for the public, national interest.
• Public service broadcasting is demonstrating why it’s a national asset. The BBC is a trusted source of information, and a link between political leaders and public in a crisis – something that the USA lacks and is suffering from.