View from the UK: Surviving COVID-19 and re-imagining the future

It is just over a week since Prime Minister Boris Johnson instructed us to stay home where possible and enlisted us in the battle against coronavirus. It already seems much longer. It’s hard to absorb the unprecedented announcements and that the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary sadly developed mild symptoms of the virus. I hope they recover quickly, because they will be needed in an emergency that may last for up to six months.

We are a bundle of nerves, virtues, and vices: scared, generous, selfish, and stupid. We are scared because the gap between contracting the virus and showing symptoms tempts us to imagine possible moments of exposure. Why did that runner, exhaling more than normal, avoid us by less than two metres? Did that supermarket trolley carry the virus? We fear going to hospital where medics could make clinical judgements to save others before us because of shortages of beds and ventilators.

We are big hearted too. Nearly 700,000 people have volunteered to help the National Health Service (NHS) and many gingerly stepped into the streets to applaud health and care workers the other night in what may be a weekly virtual demonstration of solidarity. Neighbours are looking out for each other. 

Some have also acted selfishly, but some perspective is needed here. Observer columnist Nick Cohen cites market researchers saying it was only 3 percent of shoppers who went over the top while others only slightly increased their purchases to provide more meals. On the other hand, there seems to be a spike in robberies.

There is a general truce between the political parties, but the job of the Opposition and MPs is to scrutinise ministers, politely and precisely. We should cut ministers some slack as they develop new policies and systems on the trot and with a state machine that is overwhelmed. 

Yet, if times get even harder, as the Prime Minister suggests in a letter to 30 million households, there is a need to rope in the Opposition more to share the workload and responsibility for tough decisions based on uncertain knowledge. I still suggest a temporary national government that is scrapped once the emergency ends. Incidentally, that could equip the new opposition leadership with valuable ministerial experience, which only about a dozen Labour MPs have, mostly in junior positions.

When the coronavirus crisis ends, there will be a reckoning through extensive enquiries into what was done or not done and how our economic system and a decade of austerity helped or worsened things. There will be a ferment of ideas that have more chance of winning than before.

Political activists, experts, and think tanks have time on their hands and there has been an explosion of news, views, and reports as well as many more online meetings. I dread to think what would happen if broadband faltered.

The Prime Minister and his party are way ahead in polling, but that is part of willing on the authorities and is no guide to the future. If anything, this seems to be a time for the left. Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland recently wrote that: “Just as there are no atheists on a sinking ship, there are no free-marketeers in a pandemic.” 

Any moment for the left will be easier without Jeremy Corbyn, whose leadership of the Labour party ends this week and whose last statement illustrates his utter unsuitability. He vaingloriously told the BBC: “I was denounced as somebody that wanted to spend more money than we could possibly afford in order to right the social wrongs of this country. I didn’t think that it would take only three months to be proved absolutely right by the amount of money the government is now prepared to put in.” Obviously the virus temporarily changed all normal calculations, although thinkers on the right are also contemplating post-viral politics. 

Former Conservative MP Matthew Parris asks: “Doesn’t the apparent discovery of a magic money tree kick the props from beneath the most potent and persuasive of all Conservative beliefs: that there is no magic money tree?” Senior Conservative MP Robert Halfon says Conservatives need a radically different narrative that explains why massive spending is not always possible. He also thinks that politics will be dominated by right-wing and left-wing variants of social democracy with different emphases on market and state action.

Much depends on the duration of the crisis. If longer, we will rack up more debt and the greater the economic damage – maybe losing 7.5 percent of GDP. There is a limit to borrowing before declining creditworthiness increases interest rates and there will then still be choices about how to spend. 

I should add that another Conservative, Nick Timothy, who was Theresa May’s chief thinker, has written that: “Future governments might choose to pay back these debts, or they might not. If the only consequence of not paying the bill is a little inflation, ministers might judge that they can live with it.”

There is also growing pressure for resetting Britain’s foreign policy when a major delayed review is undertaken after the crisis. That could include rethinking the massive role of China in our economy and using their 5G technology, which many fear could be digitally infected. Influential Conservatives identify China as a pariah state, which they accuse of dangerously delaying its response to the virus (allowing it to spread under the radar), then distorting data, conducting a misinformation blitz to muddy the waters, and taking predatory actions to build its power. It’s been said that deaths are 40 times the announced figure.

The idea of concluding Brexit trade deals by the end of the year seems dead in the water and should at some point be postponed for a year as have many other events and because no one has the faintest idea what state the UK and the EU will be in.

Life is on hold as we live in our physical bubbles. Cross-party unity is at a premium for now, but eggheads from left to right are rightly thinking about politics after the virus. My more immediate priority is buying actual eggs and thanking my lucky stars when I wake up without any symptoms of this often ghastly disease. 

Gary Kent is the Secretary of the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) and a Fellow of Soran University. He writes this column for Rudaw in a personal capacity. The address for the all-party group is appgkurdistan@gmail.com. 

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.