4 June 2020
View from the Cotswolds
Get over it, get a grip and get on with it
By Paul Branch
Here in West Oxfordshire, this glorious spring heralding the still greater splendour of summer, it’s tempting to sit back in the garden, savour that last (but maybe just one more) glass of wine, think just how lucky we are to be in lockdown this time of year, and complain of nothing but the intrusive humming of bees and the insistent tapping of a thrush as it manoeuvres a tasty snail out of its shell. And the farmers going about their noisy agricultural business raising clouds of dust and other particles guaranteed to get up the nose of hay fever sufferers.
Close to idyllic bliss you might think, and you’d be right. We relative newcomers feel blessed many times over for the sagacity of our decision to move here, with oodles of smugness thrown in for good measure.
Chipping Norton (aka Gateway to the Cotswolds) has proven to be a wonderful rural setting with all the amenities one would wish for, with the possible exception on an Underground train network and a Stanstedesque local airport on your doorstep. But who needs the Tube when you’re 25 miles easy drive from the dreaming spires of Oxford in one direction and Stratford-upon-Avon in the other? Birmingham airport is quite handy as an alternative to Heathrow. So no real hardships there. And staying with the aviation theme there’s RAF Brize Norton just down the road, as befits a location not called the cockpit of England for nothing.
Despite the enviable surroundings, there is distinct unease as to what the future might hold and how we get there. Not so much for us, the elderly, but more for our children and grandchildren. Just where the hell are we heading?
As baby boomers born around the end of the Second World War, we probably thought we’d escaped any similar horrors, but no .. this nasty, vicious virus has now caused more deaths in two months than the entire bombing campaign of the Blitz eighty years ago. Maybe it’s not so bad for us oldies (assuming of course we’re not part of the 35,000+ to have copped it thus far), but the legacy for generations to come needs a proper solution.
Our front line, the medics and carers, have been described quite rightly as lions straining might and main to overcome the viral foe. But where, or who, are the leonine leaders to match their heroism with wise, intelligent and practical leadership?
It’s easy to bash the government for the missteps and plain old-fashioned cock-ups visited upon us in the past couple of months. But this virus is of a scale and nature that no one has encountered before, so effectively everyone is learning on the job. It was therefore heartening to hear experts proclaim that the infection rate has finally flattened and is now decreasing, that the death rate is moving in the right direction, and, glory be, that young Mr Hancock got his 100,000 daily tests by 30 April (please don’t quibble how you define that, just take it as a good start).
It’s also easy to wring hands at the damage done to the economy – tax revenue gone through the floor, government spending to support individuals and businesses through the roof, the biggest deficit since the Stone Age .. but why is anybody surprised? It needed to be done, it has been done, so accept it as the new reality and let’s focus on how we deal with it.
It is difficult to understand why the government gets so prickly, so defensive and occasionally so offensive at the slightest whiff of questioning and perceived disloyal criticism. The media, individuals, elected MPs of all denominations, commentators at home and even abroad have a duty to question and hold our leaders to account – otherwise you might as well put democracy and free speech out with the milk bottles. Yes, that puts ministers, their civil servants, and their advisers, under pressure, but one wonders if the eventual achievement of the testing target would have happened without that questioning. Or if, left to their own devices, Boris and Priti would have continued levying charges on foreign NHS workers for health cover. Ditto with the other problems and issues that have arisen, such as PPE shortages, schools reopening, lateness of response to the approach of the virus, the claimed “ring of care” around care homes, confused and mixed messages and sound bites, and so on and so forth.
I have a far-flung extended family, within Europe and beyond to the USA in one direction and to Japan in the other, so we hear how other countries are handling similar issues, and how their governments get treated by the media. We are by no means exceptional when it comes to media criticism of ministers, but the only foreign national leaders who seem to take prickly exception are those special cases of the Americas, Trump and Bolsonaro.
The other input we get is how foreign media regard our method of dealing with the virus. This varies from an assessment of too little too late to disbelieving questioning as to why we didn’t take into account what was happening elsewhere when we had the opportunity to learn. In many cases this is attributed to British arrogance or incompetence.
Getting back to home, many of our electorate (48% if I recall correctly) voted to stay in the EU. More recently many more did not vote for our current government. But I imagine 100% of the electorate (including even our Scottish brethren) would cheer Boris and his team to the rafters if they did a really good job of getting us out of Europe and out of this COVID-19 mess, medically and financially.
We’ve moved on from the Brexit argument – it’s done, dusted and will be implemented come what may. The main concern now is that the government gets a good collaborative deal with the EU and the rest of the world, and we all live happily ever after. No one wants the car crash of a no-deal scenario where we lurch into poverty and have to depend on the US to get us out of trouble – we all know how reliable Trump is as a faithful friend. To put it bluntly, the 48% would now love to be proven spectacularly wrong.
Equally we all fervently hope to come out of the virus with our heath and prosperity more or less intact, albeit on the money front there will clearly be a bill to pay somehow, some time.
But that entails getting a real grip on what needs to be done and how, careful planning of actions against criteria and fallbacks (not just a fag packet and a calendar), consulting widely but quickly with interested parties (eg, the devolved governments) before taking major decisions, using scientific advice pragmatically and carefully as one albeit important input to decision-making (leaders are not usually “led” by the science), communicating decisions clearly and rationally with a lot of focus on explaining to the public the inevitable trade-offs, admitting to being human when mistakes are made, and generally acting like any rational and professional management team.
And, perhaps above all, as public servants, at least trying to give the impression that the public need is greater than that of party, avoiding ducking questions or passing the buck – if they can’t manage that, they’re in the wrong job.
The first lockdown easing announcement was something of a confused and uncoordinated shambles with demonstrable lack of leadership. We were told beforehand (despite all the ill-informed and ill-advised leaks to the press) to expect a mixture of general scenarios and baby steps to achieve them. We certainly got something reminiscent of a baby, and the overall picture was not so much reminiscent of the broad, confident and well thought-out brushstrokes of a Caravaggio but more of the hesitant first daubings of my younger grandchildren.
Ministers and some of their more supportive media seemingly continue to lay blame for any questioning or criticism of the government’s actions on Remoaning Lefties and the liberal media. The electorate have probably moved on since the referendum and the last general election, spurred by a compelling need for self-preservation, so maybe it’s about time the government and its cheerleaders did the same. Boris could give an inspirational lead by ditching some of his more controversial advisers (well, one at least) and thinking things through for himself in sufficient detail. Michael Gove could take a shot at understanding risk analysis, and that adding an extra, unknown risk (eg, schools re-opening) to the existing menu of routine everyday risks does indeed lead to a greater probability of something nasty happening. Priti Patel could search carefully about her person for a modicum of humanity. Matt Hancock and Dominic Raab really need to lighten up and take themselves a little less seriously, perhaps reverting to light comedy on occasion. Notice there’s no mention here of Rishi Sunak, who I think is doing a good job so far and really is getting a grip and getting on with it.
So Boris, on Brexit and COVID-19 we’re all behind you. Just do a good job, please, for all our sakes. And if you or your team just aren’t up to it, find people who are and take a back seat.
