Coronavirus: PM Boris Johnson torn by UK at breaking point as second wave bites deep
As the British Prime Minister concluded that he would have to impose new restrictions to contain COVID-19, he revealed that his great hero was no longer the mayor of Amity in the film Jaws, who kept the beaches open despite the presence of a great white shark offshore.
Confronted about his notorious stance in the past few days, Johnson replied: “I did write that article, but the mayor of Amity was only dealing with one shark that had attacked one or two of his constituents. The situation we face now is that there are greater numbers of sharks.”
To those present, it was a symbolic moment in which Johnson, a politician who has cultivated a reputation as a libertarian controversialist, embraced his role as the man trying to balance the competing demands of saving lives and the economy in what are very choppy seas.
Tensions surface
This week there is the looming threat of a second wave of the coronavirus and differences over the government’s approach. Then there are tensions in the cabinet over how to save the economy. And, unlike in the northern spring, when the first wave came, Johnson finds at his back a fractious parliamentary party in which former leaders and senior backbenchers openly plot against him.
The alarm bells began ringing in government 11 days ago. At 7.30pm on Wednesday, September 16, in the Prime Minister’s office in No 10, Professor Chris Whitty and Sir Patrick Vallance — the chief medical officer and the chief scientific adviser — delivered a “highly sobering assessment” of a “sharp increase” in the Covid-19 infection rate.
The two experts detailed how the number of COVID-related hospital admissions had doubled since the start of September and delivered a “reasonable worst-case scenario” that Britain was on a path to between 200 and 500 deaths every day by early November.
“That was the moment when he knew we needed to do something,” an aide recalled. On the Saturday morning, Whitty and Vallance briefed the cabinet.
In the intervening days, government policy appeared to veer. Draconian measures were discussed, including an immediate “circuit-breaker” national lockdown and a ban on family-to-family contacts. Some aides suggested pubs and restaurants should be closed.
Rumours of ‘fortnight firewall’
Chancellor Rishi Sunak moved to fight the closures, in a meeting with Johnson and No 10 aides on the Friday evening. Both No 10 and No 11 dismissed “totally untrue” rumours circulating in Westminster that the chancellor threatened to resign if there was a “fortnight firewall” lockdown. What no one disputes is that his opposition helped killed the idea - for now.
“The debate was whether you would be better having two or three weeks where you close down hospitality and try to drive down the virus quickly,” a source said. “But there are costs. Lockdown is not a good option for the country and we need to educate people about the costs.”
To decide what the government was going to do, Johnson asked Whitty and Vallance to assemble a “challenge session” with scientists representing a range of opinions to debate the arguments in front of him last Sunday evening.
Push for full lockdown
Professor John Edmunds, of the Sage advisory group, pressed the case for a full lockdown. He was opposed by Professor Carl Heneghan, of Oxford University, who said the government should not act yet. But even he proposed a month-long lockdown over Christmas, an idea that had little appeal to the politicians.
Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist, also spoke, explaining the light-touch approach of his government. But he pointed out that the rules were tightening in his home country.
These exchanges convinced Johnson that Whitty and Vallance represented pragmatic opinion in the centre of the range of experts. In a separate meeting on Sunday night with his top team, he approved a plan to continue with the rule of six, but introduce a 10pm curfew for pubs and restaurants. The practical effects of this were not modelled by Sage, but it was seen as “a good symbolic thing because it’s a low-cost way of sending a clear message that things are different”.
Boris’ balancing act
A Johnson ally said: “There’s a view around that he’s been captured by the scientists, but he has been listening to scientific opinion in all its forms. The position he’s taken is one that balances the need to drive down infections and keep the economy going.
“The Prime Minister is the only one who has to calibrate the COVID deaths, the non-Covid deaths and the cost to society, plus the economic costs. It’s like a seesaw. You have to constantly balance it. There are multiple plates spinning and he’s the one who has to keep them in the air.”
But, far from pleasing everyone, this balancing act has not endeared him to many ministers or MPs. The cabinet was not as balanced as the scientists. Only Health Secretary Matt Hancock and Michael Gove, the Cabinet Office minister, backed a tough lockdown now.
Westminster swirls with talk that Johnson is disgruntled, short of money and still not in peak health. On the back benches, MPs are in open revolt about tougher measures and openly questioning whether he will still be prime minister in a year’s time. “The theory has been that the 2019 intake owe their jobs to Boris and will be loyal,” said one regular in the SW1 bars. “They’re not.”
More than 50 MPs have joined a “common sense” group demanding less draconian COVID-19 rules, opposing plans for tax rises and demanding further action to curb migration. In recent days, they have seen the chief whip, Mark Spencer, and Home Secretary Priti Patel to press their case. They overlap with the so-called “Brady bunch”, grandees around Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 committee, who is drumming up cross-party support to amend the Coronavirus Bill so that MPs would have to approve further changes to the rules.
“The chairman of the 1922 leading a cross-party rebellion and working with Keir Starmer to defeat the prime minister is totally extraordinary,” said one senior Conservative. “Brady wouldn’t be doing that unless he was pretty confident he has the support of the parliamentary party.” Brady is not alone. Even Lord Howard, the former Tory leader and a Brexiteer, has been an outspoken critic of Johnson’s handling of Brexit.
Behind their hands, MPs speculate about whether Sunak and Gove would fight each other to be the “BUB” (Boris under a bus) leadership candidate if Johnson quit, or whether Gove would be prepared to serve as Sunak’s chancellor.
Sunak’s status as heir apparent was cemented last week as MPs privately applauded his speedy announcement of a wage-support plan to replace the furlough scheme in November and his line that people should learn to “live without fear” of the virus.
The chancellor was so quickly out of the blocks because he had worked through the summer recess on a series of economic plans, calibrated to different levels of Covid crackdown. His chief of staff, Liam Booth-Smith, has spent the past fortnight working on two possible speeches depending on whether the government was locking down hard.
Lockdown sharks circle
On Wednesday, Booth-Smith met Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s senior aide, and said the Treasury was “ready to go” with a plan for a wage support and loans. “They agreed there was a need to move fast, drive the political agenda and leave Labour with no room to critique,” a source said.
That afternoon, Sunak and Johnson had a final meeting to sign off on the package. Some fast work behind the scenes by Sunak’s parliamentary aide Rupert Yorke with the Speaker’s office ensured the chancellor was allowed to make a statement, rather than be summoned by the Speaker to answer an urgent question from Labour.
Sunak and Booth-Smith returned to No 11 and Booth-Smith told his colleagues: “It’s time. We can go.” They then sat around trying to find a catchy name for the schemes. “Three-way pay” and “winter wage” were both rejected in favour of a simpler “Ronseal-style, does what it says on the tin” slogan: “winter economy plan”.
Yorke’s efforts to brief MPs on the benefits of each Treasury scheme to their own constituents is also credited with cementing Sunak’s standing with MPs.
Aides in both No 10 and No 11 say relations remain good. Cummings praised Sunak in an address to ministerial aides on Friday evening. But he also urged them to get their ministers to spend 30 minutes every day in the Commons tearoom - a tacit admission that No 10’s party management has been remiss.
An attempt by No 10 to colonise the Treasury by launching a joint unit of aides, far from giving Cummings sway over the Treasury, has given the chancellor an even more secure power base. “All the No 10 economics people are now in the joint unit and they are loyal to Rishi,” said one Tory business leader who deals regularly with Downing Street.
Eradication or control?
Differences of emphasis between Johnson and Sunak have also spread confusion about the government’s strategy. Are they trying to eradicate the virus, control it for long enough to get a vaccine, or learn to live with it long-term?
Johnson’s approach is to try to control the virus with the minimum of economic harm, but that will inevitably lead to constant shifts to the rules.
A senior government source said: “What we need is behavioural change. We have delivered a jolt to the system. It’s like the paddles on the patient. We hope to resuscitate the kind of behaviour we need without taking further measures.”
But the message is equally clear. If people continue to defy the rules, a ban on households mixing will follow in three weeks’ time. “The next thing you would look at, if this doesn’t work, is the social element,” a source said.
But this is essentially buying time. Another senior Tory puts it like this: “Boris’s plan is to try to ride it out and survive until spring in the hope that a vaccine or testing bails him out then.”
The advantage for Johnson is that calibrating the response is easier than it was in March, when the first lockdown was imposed. A senior government source said: “In March we were making decisions two weeks behind the data. You didn’t even know what the situation was when you acted. You only found that out later.”
The downside for the prime minister is he can see a school of sharks in the water.
The Times
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To his enemies, he is a stubborn politician who never changes his mind or apologises for his previous statements. But behind the scenes, the coronavirus has forced Boris Johnson to rethink one of his most cherished beliefs.