Obsessing over other countries' strategies won't get Britain out of lockdown

There was a curious moment in mid-March, when it seemed like the UK, almost alone among developed economies, was planning to tough it out. At the time, this seemed like a momentary convergence of the traditional self-confidence of the British Establishment with the “We’ll do it our way” Tiggerish optimism of the Boris landslide-era Brexiteers.

“Other countries may lock down now, but they’ll only have second waves later. And those second waves may be more lethal than the first and overwhelm their health systems.” Such were the messages from Government supporters. Others said: “Perhaps lockdowns are right for other countries given the way their epidemics have evolved and the ways they are connected to each other, but in Britain things are different so we must do things our way, choosing the perfect moment to lock down for the minimum necessary time.”

Behind it all, however, there was a sense that there was a plan, that even in such extraordinary troubled times, the British Establishment had this and it would be our ideas that told us what to do, not plans designed for other situations in other countries.

Somewhere in the past eight weeks that confident optimism has collapsed, that sense that our collective will would carry us through as we chose it to do, rather than our being swept along by the tidal wave of brute events. Now the Government seems timid, both intellectually and (more crucially) morally. It has had no real plan for how to bring these events to a decisive end, and it has no real defence of why what it has done is morally right as well as technically effective.

It is defensive in our performance being compared to that of other countries. Why were we not more like Korea, or like Germany, or like Sweden, the commentators ask? And all the Government really does is hand the question over to a scientist to say it’s hard to compare countries with each other.

Our sombrero was squashed many weeks ago. Our lockdown was a startling success, with compliance far higher than scientists assumed. So why were we not relaxing measures many weeks ago, to allow a steady flow of cases that would not overwhelm the NHS? The reason is surely that the Government is afraid of being accused of letting tens of thousands of people die.

It has long since ceased to believe it has a plan that is technically and morally the correct one to maximise the welfare of the country as a whole. All it has appeared to care about – reflecting the fact that it is all the press appears to care about and the Government has not given them any alternative metric – is that the UK should not top the European Covid-19 deaths table when all this is done.

The Government has long since become too cowardly to tell the truth: that banning convivial gatherings in the country for years is vastly too high a price to consider paying to achieve an annual death toll, from all causes, of 600,000 this year instead of 650,000. If one truly believed they thought that was a price worth paying that would be one thing. One would think them quite mad and totally unfit persons to govern a country, but at least one would understand their point of view.

But the truth is that they know that is wrong. It is morally indefensible to consider drawing this out for as long as ministers and their advisors propose, each day, on TV. And there is not the slightest chance of them actually doing it. They only say that is their plan because they are afraid – morally and politically – of the headline screams of “Tens of thousands dead!”

And they are also intellectually and technically timid. They have not believed they could carry the country with them if they told us what they intended to do. Repeatedly they said it would be irresponsible to discuss options with us. They radically underestimated how much people would stay at home when the government asked them to. And I suspect they radically underestimate the risk that if (probably when) the public loses confidence in the Government’s plan, social distancing measures and other restrictions will collapse. Their only plan is the Micawber Strategy: “Something will turn up.”

Boris's Government needs to rediscover its inner Tigger. Who cares how many deaths other countries have had? Who cares what New Zealand, in its totally different circumstances, has done? Who cares if with the benefit of hindsight Sweden was right? We are here, now, today. The birds sing fleetingly, the sunlight falls and is gone, and the river flows past. This moment will not return and what really matters is what we choose to do now. Decide what you consider morally and technically right, do that, and believe in it.