Brexit, Pandemic, Power

Much has been written about how the pandemic has exposed many aspects of our society that should have been addressed long ago: inequality, poverty, insecure employment conditions, lack of social housing, the inhumane treatment of refugees and asylum seekers, and so on. I commented some time ago that Brexit carried within it the possible seeds of the dissolution of the United Kingdom, as an anti-EU England dragged a reluctant Scotland and Northern Ireland into a future neither nation voted for. Covid-19 has further exposed differences and has also laid bare how Brexit is being used by a faction to accrete power in its hands.

At one level, Brexit was a power grab by a faction of the Conservative government. Prime Minister May attempted to implement Brexit while balancing the Brexit hardliners in her party with pro-Brexit or less doctrinaire MPs. Mr. Johnson dispensed with such niceties upon being chosen ad leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister. He expelled from the party the most significant MPs who opposed Brexit. Others who harboured doubts had to swear unswerving loyalty to the Brexit cause. And, of course, the hard-line Brexiters are now dominant in the party.

However, while Brexit was the convenient vehicle in which Mr. Johnson drove to 10 Downing Street, the real project is an accretion of power in the hands of. a small clique: Mr. Johnson and a group of devoted aides who served with him when he was Mayor of London, his partner in Brexit Michael Gove, and a self-described genius, Dominic Cummings, who is chief of staff in 10 Downing Street. Britain is now effectively ruled by this Gang of Three and their associates.

They have promptly set about seizing all the key levers of power. Abraham Lincoln is said by his biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin to have appointed a cabinet of rivals (and talents). Mr. Johnson did no such thing. Members of the cabinet had to meet the following qualifications: absolute loyalty to Brexit; mediocre talent; unable to mount any challenge to Mr. Johnson’s authority. The only member who might not have met these standards was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid, who was manoeuvred into resigning or facing public humiliation within days of the December election triumph. Senior civil servants in key positions have been forced out and replaced with Johnson loyalists. All political advisers to cabinet ministers report to Mr. Cummings who controls the advice they give.

Messrs. Johnson and Cummings have a track record of contempt for the notion of public accountability. However, they have recently miscalculated in their attempt to ensure that the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament should be controlled by their lackeys. By law  (the Justice and Security Act 2013) this committee is independent of the government and the security agencies, which it is meant to scrutinize. By law the chair should be chosen independently by its members. However, the Prime minister’s office appointed to the committee five Conservative MPs, who, it assumed, would be obedient and elect one of their number, Chris Grayling, as Chairman. Mr. Grayling is an ultra-loyal Brexiter who was not given a cabinet appointment. He is affectionately known as Failing Grayling for his unblemished record of incompetence, leaving behind him in every ministerial post he has held failure and disaster. He is also lacking in any qualifications for the post of Chairman, unlike another committee member, the Conservative, Dr. Julian Lewis. Unfortunately, for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Grayling, the opposition MPs on the committee approached Dr. Lewis, who agreed to stand was to duly elected. Mr. Johnson promptly expelled Dr. Lewis from the Conservative Party. For the record, the Conservative MPs who lacked the backbone to uphold the Justice and Security Act 2013 were: Sir John Hayes, Mark Pritchard, Therese Villiers (like Mr. Grayling a close associate of the Gang of Three), and, of course, Chris Grayling.

The Attorney General, an ardent Brexiter, has spoken of the need to “reform the judiciary”. The motive for the reform seems to be the Supreme Court’s ruling that Mr. Johnson’s attempt to prorogue Parliament for an unprecedently long period in the summer of 2019 was unlawful. This again, speaks to the desire to avoid accountability. There has also been talk from the Culture and Media Secretary of a review of the funding of the BBC, which is held by the Brexit faction to have been insufficiently enthusiastic about Brexit.

You may by now be asking what has all this to do with Brexit? Unfortunately for Messrs. Johnson, Gove and Cummings, the pandemic has exposed the incompetence of the government that they control. It would be tedious here to record all their errors and poor management. Suffice to record the death rates per million in a selection of countries as of 17 July:

Belgium	855
UK	678
Spain	605
Italy	580
Sweden	547
France	450
USA	412
Brazil	366
Germany	109

Now, the UK consists of four nations: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Each manages its own public health policy.  Wales, governed by a Labour Party administration has an equivalent death rate of 493 and Scotland, where the Scottish National Party forms the government, 457. The First Minister of Scotland has been exceptionally clear in her communications and in developing a strategy to reduce the rate of infection as close to zero as possible. After a change in policy has been introduced, Scotland waits to evaluate its impact before announcing any further change. The First Minister alone announces each change in policy, explains clearly and calmly the reasons for it. The UK government, which sets policy only for England, issues announcement after announcement without any clear evaluation of the impact of any single measure. The announcements are made by a variety of ministers and on several occasions have been contradicted by the words or actions of other ministers.

Moreover, Mr. Johnson’s government often contradicts itself. An example is the requirement to wear masks in shops and other enclosed public spaces. Scotland made its position crystal clear from the start: the wearing of masks (formally speaking face coverings) was unambiguously mandatory from the day it was announced. In England, the possibility of requiring the wearing of masks was first briefed anonymously to the media to test the reaction. The Chancellor of the Exchequer then posed in a restaurant serving lunch as a waiter, without wearing a mask. Mr. Gove declared that wearing a mask in a shop should be voluntary, while the Health Secretary disagreed. Mr. Gove and another minister, Liz Truss, were seen buying a sandwich in a shop without wearing masks. When the requirement to wear a mask was formally announced to be mandatory, its introduction was delayed for ten days.

For the last two decades, the trend in British politics has been to devolve powers over certain areas of policy to the governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, in each nation to varying degrees and over varying areas of policy. This has created the opportunity for the first ministers of those nations to become significant figures nationally. In the case of Scotland, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, whose dislike of Mr. Johnson is very mutual, has taken personal command of health policy. She has shown herself to be capable, a clear communicator, and has a well-articulated strategy.

It clearly displeases Johnson, Gove and Cummings that the devolved nations have powers that can expose their failings. They plan to reduce the powers that are reserved to the devolved nations by various means. For example, devolved administrations can set standards for products sold in their nation. For example, Scotland (or Wales or Northern Ireland) can prohibit the sale of meat raised using hormones, or chickens housed at stocking densities higher than the norm required in Scotland. This will technically be the case after Brexit. However, the UK government has announced that the United Kingdom will form a single market, free of any restrictions on trade between the constituent nations. Thus, the UK could negotiate a trade agreement with the USA that permits the import of hormone treated US beef into the English market, or chickens raised to standards deemed unacceptable in the UK, which could then be sold on into Scotland. Similar arrangements will apply to other matters over which devolved nations technically have authority: such as rules concerning state aid. It might strike you as ironic that the Gang of Three insist triumphantly that the UK leave entirely the much-hated EU free market because it impinges on UK sovereignty, but that they intend to restrict the sovereignty of the devolved nations in a very similar fashion.

There are now murmurings that the government intends to exercise greater control over the National Health Service. This is somewhat ironic, since only eight years ago the Conservative government reformed the NHS to reduce direct ministerial responsibility for the NHS. The reform was, by common agreement, at best a failure, at worst disastrous. Apparently, Simon Stevens, the Chief Executive of the NHS, is not sufficiently compliant. Matt Hancock, the Minster for Health, has discovered that he cannot simply tell Mr. Stevens what to do. The minister has to persuade him that a particular proposal is a good idea. The pandemic has exposed the government’s mis-management of the national health and care system. A chief executive who is independent-minded, and who speaks his mind, is not helpful to the government’s reputation management.

The pandemic also provides an opportunity for the government to exercise control over the curricula of universities. Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary, who has no discernible qualifications for the post nor any understanding of education, has announced that universities that receive financial support from the government will have to meet standards of free speech stipulated by Mr .Williamson. Universities will also have to abolish courses that do not meet Mr. Williamson’s criteria for value for money. For example, they must provide access to well-paid graduate jobs, preferably in STEM-related industries, nursing or teaching. Presumably, therefore, the teaching of theology, Latin, ancient Greek, Sanskrit and innumerable other humanities subjects will disappear. Whether my beloved Mexican history would survive Mr. Williamson’s knife I doubt.