No. 128 - Coronavirus? Never Waste a Good Crisis Boris.

Dear James,

Apparently back in the good old days -1998 to be precise - a man named Wolstenholme, called on the construction industry to use the Great Recession of that time as an opportunity to improve the image of its dismal performance. The phrase, ‘Never waste a good crisis’ has now entered the political lexicon. Boris has certainly been keen to put it to good use recently.

Last Tuesday at the Downing Street Conference on Coronavirus, he stood, uncomfortably smirkless, alongside two of our nation’s most highly trusted experts. Normally, Boris doesn’t do ‘serious’ because it implies responsibility and with responsibility come the challenges of hard thinking and hard work. But on Tuesday he was in good company. Sir Patrick Vallance is the government Chief Scientific Adviser and Professor Chris Whitty is our Chief Medical Officer. With these two giants standing next to him, Boris sounded almost as if he knew what he was talking about. Yet as the time passed, it became clear that he was ever more uncomfortable. Politics for Boris is not about delivering bad news. That is not his native style. He much prefers sunny uplands to dark and treacherous lowlands. But at least now, he had two very dependable experts supporting him on either side. When ‘events’ like Coronavirus happen, you need experts. Otherwise you are left flapping like a landed cod, a situation that Boris knows only too well. 

Remember Mr Gove and the Vote Leave campaign in 2016? Gove said that “people in this country have had enough of experts”.  This was in my opinion, the first step towards the ‘book burning’ in 1933 Germany. The life of the mind is gone, the expert is dead. In 2016 this virus spread as quickly as Coronavirus today. One questioner compared Mr Gove to a first world war general, waving the flag and saying ‘over the top, men’, but with no idea what was on the front line or what the casualty rate would be in the conflicts to come. Gove responded by saying the Remain campaign was underestimating Britain’s potential which is the usual resort of the expert deniers to such questions. Use blind emotion rather than reason. 

The disparagement of ‘experts’, the birth of fake news and the general ‘culture of truth denial’ were at the centre of the Brexiteer’s campaign. The Vote Leave zealots could do it all themselves. They could make up ‘their own truth’, unencumbered by any reference to experts. They could run the universe without facts because they ‘knew’ the truth. Oh happy days!

But last Tuesday, the experts hit back. Boris was faced with a health threat like few others in our history and he desperately needed real support. Professor Whitty is an epidemiologist. He studies the way that epidemics spread from animal to person, from person to person and from person to groups and from groups to nations. He understands, to the best knowledge available, how viruses lock onto healthy cells and take over the body. We have recently been taught the phrases, ‘super-spreader’, ‘self-isolation’ and ‘social distancing’. And on Tuesday Boris had no choice. He had to depend on the best evidence available. You could almost hear his sigh of relief to be backed by the real thinkers of our nation. 

Meanwhile however, camouflaged by the Coronavirus crisis, and despite the evidence of experts, Boris continues his remorseless attempt to ‘change our country for ever’. Our self-imposed isolation continued apace when on Friday the government told us it was cutting us off from the European aviation safety forum (EASA) despite complaints from the major players in the UK aviation industry (ADS) that this would be disastrous. However, there is a small ray of hope. Today the government announced that it is setting up an ‘Anti-Disinformation Unit’ to counter the fake news currently on the web regarding Coronavirus. What took you so long Boris? Oh, and by the way, why not spread its remit to things economic and political? But that would be a step too far I guess? You’d have too much to lose! 

Anyway James, I guess you are not considering self-isolation yet? Not necessary I suppose. You self-isolated from the community of evidence based politicians way back in 2016. Such a pity!

Kind regards,

BH - Your Concerned Constituent