The UK’s lockdown is ending on Monday, as you can tell from the newspapers which have reported on this with almost breathless glee. “HURRAH! LOCKDOWN FREEDOM BECKONS” write the Daily Mail, two days after the front page’s attacks on Neil Ferguson and his lover bumped the UK’s death toll down to second place. “HAPPY MONDAY” say the Sun — perhaps it will be followed by a Blue one if the death toll rises again, meaning that the only people happy will be New Order when they cash their royalties. This, of course, is itself obfuscation: the actual rules potentially being lifted are very minor: a relaxation of bans on outdoor gatherings, which have been inconsistently policed throughout; no more bans on people going for a second run (you mad lot); we will no longer be told to “stay home, protect the NHS, save lives”, which must be good news for the various people affiliated with the government who have broken that advice in the last month.
But then, not really lifting what was not really a lockdown to begin with feels like the natural endpoint. In Italy, where we learned the virus had taken a grim toll and which was held up as a horror story, the lockdown was far more severe: almost all businesses were closed down, members of the public were required to carry paperwork stating a reason for travel, and local politicians produced videos berating members of the public who did not listen. Spain recently lifted some of their restrictions and in so doing brought themselves roughly to where the UK’s “draconian”, “fascist” lockdown had been for some time. The UK was slow to batten down the hatches but seems remarkably quick to open them again, to create a false image of returning to normal.
This disconnect between the truth and the ideal told by the government is a theme that permeates the UK’s response to coronavirus. We are frequently told that the UK has passed the peak of coronavirus and social distancing measures have helped flatten the curve. But the UK is still suffering over 500 deaths a day, and new cases are still being reported — over 6,000 yesterday. This is, technically, down from the peak, when over 1,000 deaths were being reported a day. But when Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, stood in the House of Commons just over two weeks ago and declared that the UK had got through the worst, the figures looked remarkably similar: 763 deaths were reported that day, and in fact the number of confirmed new cases was actually lower, at 4,451 — perhaps some of this is attributable to lower testing counts at the time, but in that case that is perhaps more worrying, that there may be more cases out there which are not being tested. The fact remains there is still a huge gulf between what we are being told and what we can see with our eyes is happening.
On the subject of testing, I will be the 100,000th person to mention Matt Hancock’s testing target: 100,000 tests a day by the end of April. On 30th April, to much fanfare, the government announced it had hit that target; many critics pointed out that this had largely been done by sending out a large number of test-at-home kits in the post on that date. Since then the government has missed that target five days in a row; yesterday the government announced 69,463 tests had been performed on 57,006 people. Boris Johnson has said the UK will aim for 200,000 lab tests by the end of May, but currently the UK is going in the wrong direction.
We were told we needed a good target to aim for as motivation to increase capacity; the fact is even assuming that were true it has not happened. It seems far more likely that the only thing the government was working to protect was Matt Hancock’s reputation, trying to hit one good set of headlines rather than working towards an effective, consistent public health response. The gold standard is Germany: by the 4th April they was conducting 116,655 swab tests per day, just over a third of the total tests conducted in the entirety of the UK by that point. The UK government has instead spent time publishing responses to individual newspaper articles it dislikes — smacking of Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings’ “crisis response team” — and claiming that it never held policy positions that are a matter of record.
Considering this obsession with spin, the UK government’s communication has been abysmal throughout the COVID-19 crisis. In early March we were told that large sporting events could continue as the potential for spread was low; we now can see a correlation between coronavirus cases and areas that held large events during that timeframe, including Liverpool v Atletico Madrid in the Champions League and, infamously, the Cheltenham Festival, which went ahead after seeing Boris Johnson go to the rugby at Twickenham the weekend before (during which he may very well have picked up his own case of COVID-19). The U-turn away from the “herd immunity” strategy which key figures are desperate to pretend didn’t happen was itself slow; we were all given one last night in the pub before they were closed, even as it became obvious social distancing measures were needed as a matter of urgency.
One would expect that a government that was reticent to make the big call to go into lockdown until it was too late would be similarly keen not to lift it, an even bigger decision, but apparently not. Already the headlines of the newspapers have not so much jumped the gun as started in the wrong race altogether. The story that was written up this morning did not even survive the day before it was rowed back. Boris Johnson is to address the nation about plans going forward on Sunday, this is true, after discussions with cabinet (some of whom are keener than others to lift restrictions) and the other countries of the UK (likewise). It is too late of course. The response to today’s headlines will be inevitable: some people will assume they are safe, that the crisis is over. People will assume they can ignore social distancing guidelines. The rate of infection will go up. More people will die. The government know this, and will blame those who do for misunderstanding its advice — the advice that has changed not just from day to day but sometimes hour by hour.
The spin starts with the announcement itself: Johnson will not address Parliament, or allow public questioning from the increasingly vocal Leader of the Opposition, Keir Starmer. Starmer will presumably just have to write another column behind the paywall at the Times. Lest I be accused of only kicking the Tories, Starmer is partially responsible for the obsession on lifting the lockdown, having made a published exit strategy from the lockdown one of his first priorities as Labour leader. This is in between calls for “national consensus”, presumably in the hopes that the Labour voters who defected to the Conservatives in the election fail to notice that they cannot pay their outstanding bills with platitudes. It is pretty sad that the leader of the Opposition is getting outflanked in attempts to support working people by both his own deputy, Angela Rayner, and the presumptive leader of the Liberal Democrats, Layla Moran. Perhaps those who theorise “anyone could do a better job than Corbyn” should make that the floor, not the ceiling, of building constructive opposition.
That said, the opposition can only do so much and ultimately the government is responsible for its own actions, which in this case, means brazen lies are the name of the game. Hancock’s arbitrary target was always going to be bad policy, but it could have led to a proper ramping up of testing. Instead the Department of Health is fiddling not just with statistics but with tests in order to hit the target. It ceases to be a benign lie and becomes the point where the government’s focus on PR is actively dangerous, because a widespread testing programme is necessary to ensure that the lockdown can be lifted safely — the precise thing which the UK, for all its bluster, lacks. A country in which key workers struggle to get tested, and care workers are scared to get tested because they need the money they can only get from working, is a country that will crash headlong into a second peak — while the people responsible wash their hands and talk incessantly of targets and “apparent success”, because appearances are all they have. An opposition that talks of “consensus”, a government whose effusive spin is matched only by their incompetence in messaging, a media that plays up an “end” to the “lockdown” where neither of these words are true — perhaps these walking contradictions all deserve each other. It’s a pity that we are the ones who will suffer for it.
