Boris Johnson’s leadership is on the line in second coronavirus lockdown

It was a step the prime minister clearly did not want to take. The options confronting him were all unpalatable and would be tough for any government. In putting England into a second lockdown, his team has shown it has learned some lessons from the spring – but not enough.

Pressure to close schools should be resisted

The government has drawn two conclusions from the spring: to keep schools open and to try to keep up the flow of non-Covid patients through GP surgeries and hospitals. It is right on both counts. The loss of the summer term of in-person teaching showed the inadequacies of online learning for many pupils, particularly the poorest. Some of the teaching unions are now calling for a “firebreak” in schools, stopping teaching at least in secondary schools for an undefined spell. That should be resisted even if measures such as mask wearing in communal areas are made mandatory, rather than at schools’ discretion. Otherwise, there will be an understandable call to scrap public exams in the summer because of the wide variations in teaching that pupils will have had, and the government will face a repeat of this year’s debacle.

Similarly, the government has rightly decided to maintain the growing access to medical services for non-Covid patients. For all the warnings of hospitals being overwhelmed this winter, they have not yet been (as they were not in the first wave), while GPs and consultants continue to sound the alarm about how few patients with non-coronavirus afflictions they are seeing compared to previous years. If a backlog of cases is not to get higher, efforts to keep open access to treatment should continue.

The government is right to extend the furlough scheme

The government has also rightly extended its furlough scheme – one of its most successful measures of the first lockdown – on the day it was due to expire. If the government is ordering businesses to close when they would probably have a viable life when the pandemic crisis has past, then it needs to offer them support. To that extent, the chancellor’s argument with regional mayors was premature: denying local businesses that support while insisting on a local “Tier 3” lockdown. The main weakness of the government’s largely sure-footed response in this area has been in discussion with local leaders.

On the other hand, the distinction Rishi Sunak wants the economic life of the country to begin to make – between businesses that will be viable after the virus and those, in a changed world of work and travel, that will not – is important and needs to be made at some point. The strength of the US economy raises the question – although does not at this point answer it – about whether preserving incomes (through benefits) rather than preserving jobs (as the UK has sought to do) should have more of a role.

Relations between Westminster and the devolved nations are deteriorating

In the same way, the government has allowed relations with devolved nations to deteriorate beyond any justification (such as irritation at the adroitness with which Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP exploit any government setback). Mark Drakeford, first minister of Wales, reacted with fury to the extension of the furlough scheme, on the grounds that the government had refused this support to Welsh employers when Wales entered its own 17-day “firebreak” lockdown, making it available only when the English lockdown was announced. There is a response the government could justifiably make: to point out that the financial support for these devolved lockdowns is coming from the UK’s borrowing capability as a whole (supported disproportionately by the economic engine of the south east) and that it needs to co-ordinate the whole.

The lockdown policies of the whole UK need to work together, the UK government could argue, whatever the local health conditions – and politics. But it has allowed aggravation and a sense of grievance to rise, including by poor communication with the devolved governments (and their voters – polls show that many in Scotland think the furlough scheme is of the SNP’s creation). During the crisis, a sense has grown that the UK’s four components are diverging. This does nothing to advance the government’s desire to strengthen the Union, but at least some of the reason comes back to its own door. 

The government’s use of scientific advice is confusing

It is harder for the government than in the first phase of the crisis to say that it is “following the science”. The whole country is now aware of how the scientists disagree with each other – and sometimes with the government. But clearly, projections of infections and deaths were enough to make the government act. It should be clear from the start – not just in one answer from Michael Gove to a media question – of whether and why the lockdown might be extended beyond 2 December (given that, as many modellers expect, lags in infection and reporting mean the results of the lockdown might not be evident by then).

It should also use the lockdown to improve the track and trace system onto which it piled so many hopes and which has been one of the biggest failures of its management and communication.

Boris Johnson must show leadership and communicate his strategy clearly

Consistency of communication has been poor throughout – and is one of the government’s greatest weaknesses. The rushed announcement of this second lockdown over the weekend is just the latest example. The prime minister now faces a greater political challenge than in March, when much of the country was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Conservative MPs are restless and massing against the lockdown vote this week (although it will almost certainly go through). Unions think the lockdown does not go far enough. Devolved nations and regional mayors are lambasting the government for encouraging a policy of local curbs but persisting with a broader model for economic support (which left “Tier 2” regions with little and “Tier 3” with less than is now offered). The government will need huge skills to persuade people to take up a vaccine (or vaccines) of unknown and maybe imperfect efficacy when those become available. In this second lockdown that the prime minister so much did not want to announce, his leadership will be on the line.