Get a grip

I received a text yesterday from an old friend who was incensed at the conduct of Boris Johnson’s government over the provision of free school meals to the children of poor families during the Covid-19 crisis. For those not following the story, the Man United footballer Marcus Rashford issued a plea to the government to continue the practice during the summer but the government announced on Monday that it would not do so. Following a host of bad publicity on social media, the government yesterday reversed its stance. In the words of my buddy, “The PM, no. 10 and the whole government have been made to look useless by a 22 year old footballer.” He went on to make the point that the government’s inability to make decisions on key policy matters is increasingly harming the electorate be it health, the economy or Brexit.

He speaks for many. Indeed, the United Kingdom could not be a less appropriately named country at the present time. For one thing the fact that the monarch is a woman makes it a Queendom, but perhaps more importantly it is far from united. It is fighting what appears to be a culture war in which the respective factions see only the righteousness of their arguments whilst dismissing those of their opponents. What passes for public debate takes place in an echo chamber in which the volume is being cranked ever higher (viz. the demonstrations in the streets last weekend) and matters have come to a stage where people appear to identify more with what they oppose than what they support. As an economist who still believes in rational evidence-based policy, this is all very disheartening. 

The origins of (culture) war 

Like many wars, the origins of the present conflict lie deep in the past and people may differ as to the proximate causes. For my money, a key turning point occurred around 1979-80 with the election of neo-liberal governments in the US and UK which subsequently gave primacy to the markets over the state and heralded the breakup of the post-1945 consensus. It unleashed a conflict between traditionalists and progressives, conservatives and liberals, hawks and doves etc. The shared values which had characterised the reconstruction of the post-war global economic order began to fray, particularly following the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

This was particularly apparent on the right of the US political spectrum, the lessons of which were absorbed by many in the UK. Remember the efforts by US Leader of the House Newt Gingrich to shut down Congress in 1995-96 purely for political reasons? Or the attempts to impeach President Clinton in 1998-99 as the political right became desperate to deliver a political knockout? This was followed by the rise of the Tea Party movement which subverted the Republican Party and propelled Donald Trump into the White House.

On this side of the Atlantic, the culture war has been fought less aggressively but it has been bubbling away nonetheless with some of the tricks from the US playbook having been adopted in the UK. The rise of the Tea Party is mirrored in the emergence of UKIP and the Brexit Party whilst the politically motivated Congressional shutdowns found expression in Boris Johnson’s attempt to prorogue parliament. The leitmotif of the UK culture war was Euroscepticism. Many Conservatives who never quite got over the deposition of Margaret Thatcher in 1990 rallied behind this cause, culminating in the Brexit referendum of 2016 and lighting the touchpaper of division which had been simmering for some time. For many on the right, Brexit represents the Trumpian equivalent of draining the swamp: It was the culture war writ large as Brexiteers made out that this was an opportunity for the politically disenfranchised to take back control. This was hogwash in 2016 and as the events of the past four years have shown, it still is.

Far from resolving anything, the divisions sown by Brexit have widened. The referendum was won by a narrow majority and the government has done nothing to assuage the concerns of those who voted Remain. And whilst it is true that in the December general election the party which promised to “get Brexit done” won the biggest parliamentary majority since 2001, much of the evidence suggests this was less due to the fact that people had a favourable image of the Conservatives than they had a negative view of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn. 

Boris Johnson’s problems are piling up

Whatever else we may think of Boris Johnson he is a brilliant political salesman – he is, in short, a populist. He is also a product of the culture war in which his set of political values is rooted in a vision of a glorious imperial past. But this is where he may run into difficulty. The tectonic plates of the culture war have shifted – maybe temporarily but perhaps sufficiently to cause more permanent damage. This finds expression in the current strength of the Black Lives Matter movement, which runs contrary to the Johnson view of the UK’s imperial past and threatens to heap more trouble on a government which is now feeling the pressure (for German speakers interested in a Swiss perspective, I liked this article in the NZZ). 

His government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis has been less than sure-footed and it has scored a number of own goals, most notably by failing to sanction Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s chief adviser, for breaking lockdown rules. It is also hard to imagine that the electorate will easily forgive the highest number of Covid deaths in Europe. We are only six months into what is scheduled to be a five year term for Johnson’s government. But the weaknesses inherent in his character mean that he has got off to a rocky start. As a populist, Johnson wants to keep as many people happy as he can but this is inconsistent with the credo of good governance which requires setting out a number of objectives and working out a plan how to achieve them.

These problems will be compounded by the fact the government will have to cope with the deepest recession in living memory. To turn things around from here requires discipline and hard work, neither of which the prime minister is noted for. I am reminded of the Conservative government of 1992-97 which was faced with an economic crisis early in its term (expulsion from the ERM) and which spent almost five years trying to get ahead of the agenda. It failed and was eventually swept aside by a Labour Party led by a moderate leader in the form of Tony Blair which condemned the Tories to 13 years in opposition.

This is not to say that we will necessarily see a rerun of the 1990s. But aside from getting Brexit done, it is not at all clear what Johnson’s government stands for. This makes it incredibly important that it gets Brexit right, by which we mean not compounding the economic damage. Failure to deliver on the signature policy at a time of mounting economic difficulties and the shifting sands of cultural change would end the career of most politicians. Boris Johnson is no ordinary politician but he has a lot of work to do to pull things around. Demonstrating leadership and running government to manage the country, rather than operating permanently in campaign mode, would be a good start.