The resignation of Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon today took many by surprise. Her leadership of the Scottish National Party (SNP) and Scotland since 2014 has seen support for her party, and the cause of independence, increase significantly. Whilst recent controversies have dented her support, were an election held tomorrow the SNP would be re-elected to Holyrood and would win the most Scottish Seats in a Westminster election.
Much like the recent resignation of Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, Sturgeon’s resignation comes after many years of hate and vitriol from political opponents. This was alluded to in her resignation announcement:
The First Minister is never off duty, particularly in this day and age. There is virtually no privacy. Even ordinary stuff that most people take for granted, like going for a coffee with friends or for a walk on your own becomes very difficult. And the nature and form of modern political discourse means that there is a much greater intensity – dare I say it? – brutality to life as a politician than in years gone by. All in all, and actually for a long time without being apparent, it takes its toll on you and on those around you. And if that is true in the best of times, it has been more so in recent years. Leading this country through the Covid pandemic is by far the toughest thing I’ve done. It may well be the toughest thing I ever do. I certainly hope so. Now by no stretch of the imagination was my job the hardest in the country during that time. But the weight of responsibility was immense, and it’s only very recently, I think, that I’ve started to comprehend, let alone process, the physical and mental impact of it on me.
In recent weeks, Sturgeon suffered political setbacks, which may have led to this decision today.
The first of these was the Supreme Court ruling in late November 2022 that a second referendum on Scottish Independence cannot be held, unless Westminster agrees to it. Controversially, Sturgeon’s response to this decision was that the next general election should be treated as a defacto referendum, something that SNP supporters are quite split on.
The English press, and in particular the Tory Press, has run a concerted campaign of attacking Sturgeon and the SNP for years. Pro Conservative newspaper The Telegraph have predicted doom for the Scottish Independence movement many times. For example, former SNP leader Alex Salmond formed Alba and has even gone as far as to describe Scotland as a “failed state” under Sturgeon’s leadership.
Despite investigations of breaching the Ministerial Code, which Sturgeon was cleared of, many in the media talked up her imminent political demise prior to the 2021 Holyrood elections. Others claimed that if the SNP did not win an outright majority, it showed there was not really support for independence in Scotland. That the SNP and Scottish Greens, who also support independence, did gain a majority in the 2021 Scottish election is conveniently downplayed by much of the media, especially in England.
My previous post asked whether political leadership mattered. Nicola Sturgeon as SNP leader has been a strong advocate for independence, and this will undoubtedly have contributed to increased support for this cause.
While Sturgeon’s strong leadership and vision have helped build support for Scottish Independence, the Conservative and Unionist Party’s arrogance and self-serving incompetence in government have greatly aided her in this. Under the Tories, many Scots have become convinced they would be better off leaving the United Kingdom.
Polls show varying levels of support for independence. Overall, support for independence is higher than in the 2014 referendum. Further, the SNP continue to dominate Scottish politics, and a new leader is unlikely to change this. Those who believe Sturgeon’s departure spells the end for the independence movement will likely soon be disappointed.
Last week people in New Zealand and around the world were shocked to hear that Jacinda Ardern had resigned as Prime Minister. An unexpected end to her extraordinary five years in this role. Her exit, like everything else she had done as a leader, was on her terms.
Jacinda Ardern has surprised people throughout her political career, not least when she took over as Labour Leader in August 2017. She took the New Zealand Labour Party from a long way behind in the polls to government in just a few weeks.
I first heard of Jacinda Ardern just after the 2008 election. Labour had just lost power after nine years in office. Ardern was one of the new MPs being touted as the future of the party. At that time I was not a party member, having left in 2002 and did not rejoin until 2013. Whilst I was hearing Jacinda’s name a lot, much of the noise was from the Wellington bubble and party insiders. It was only later that I, like most New Zealand voters was to see the political force she really was.
I first met Jacinda at Labour Leadership campaign hustings in Auckland in 2014. She was Grant Robertson’s running mate and I was the campaign manager for Andrew Little, who went on to narrowly win that leadership contest. We were standing outside this hustings event leafleting for our respective campaigns. I realised just before the meeting that my cell phone was about to die, so asked if I could borrow her charger. Unfortunately, she did not have one, and for the next 90 minutes, I nervously watched my phone’s battery bar decline.
Jacinda came in as a list MP, having unsuccessfully contested the safe Tory seat of Waikato in 2008. In 2011 and 2014 she ran in the Auckland Central electorate, which prior to 2008 had been considered a moderately safe Labour seat. Jacinda was unsuccessful both times and remained a list MP until 2017 when she won Helen Clark’s old electorate of Mount Albert. Shortly after this, she became Deputy Leader of the Party.
Up till this point, Jacinda only had limited support outside the political bubble in Wellington. She was a strong performer in parliament and from 2014 onwards had started getting some very good soft media building her brand as a relatable politician. But it was once she became deputy leader that her profile really began to grow. When polling started to show her personal support was ahead of the party leader, her promotion was only a matter of time.
In August 2017, just a few weeks out from the New Zealand General Election, Andrew Little resigned as party leader as it was clear that he was unlikely to win. A few days later Jacinda was elected leader. In the days that followed Labour’s polling numbers started to bounce. As the campaign wore on, National Party (the NZ Tory Party) Prime Minister Bill English, who had taken over the role only a few months earlier, began to sound rattled. By the time of the main leader’s debates, Jacindamania had taken hold.
Despite all this, it was still far from certain that Labour could win the election. After nearly a decade of polling behind the National Party, the last-minute polling surge still felt like it could still fall away again.
In my blog post from 2020, I described the last time I met Jacinda, just one day after she became the Leader of the Opposition:
A few weeks before leaving New Zealand, my friend Rob and I were in Burger Fuel on Cuba Street the hipster trendy part of Wellington. Piko was renting an office space in the old Wellington Trades Hall and we were doing painting and renovations of the space. In our crappy paint-covered work clothes we sat in Burger Fuel when Rob alerts me to who had just walked into the restaurant. 24 hours beforehand, Jacinda Ardern had replaced Andrew Little as leader of the Labour Party. We both knew Jacinda so said hello and talked about the Stand with Pike campaign we had been working on which Jacinda had pledged to support a few hours before. This slightly awkward conversation with the new leader of the opposition did not last long. None of us, I suspect even Jacinda, knew that in a few weeks’ time, she would achieve one of the greatest upsets in New Zealand’s political history and become Prime Minister
A few weeks later I moved to London. By the time I had left, the polls had narrowed and it looked as though the election would be close. I arrived in London on Monday 11 September, and that afternoon went down to New Zealand House in Haymarket to vote for the New Zealand Labour Party. Whilst I wanted NZ Labour to win, I still did not believe they would. As I watched the election results come in just under a fortnight later, it still seemed like the National Party would just hold on for another term. But a series of factors conspired, resulting in what is still one of the most surprising NZ political victories in living memory.
Social democratic values and policies are in fact far more aligned with the New Zealand public than the Tories. I believe the same is true in Britain, as I outlined in my blog posts on why the UK Labour Party lost the 2019 election. Yet in both countries, the Tories win more elections than they lose. In the years 2008 to 2017 when the NZ Labour Party were in opposition, Labour policy often had far more support than the Labour Party. For example the Key Governments’ partial privatisation of state-owned assets in 2011 which Labour opposed. On that specific issue, polls showed public opposition to privatisation. Yet in 2011, National was easily reelected and Labour’s share of the vote declined.
Jacinda’s strength as a leader became apparent during the 2017 campaign. She was able to bridge the gap between policy and people’s perceptions. She convince people that Labour values were aligned with their own, in a way that many of her predecessors simply had not. Her warmth, her strong communication style and her positivity gave a human face to centre-left politics, one that voters could relate to.
The results of the 2017 election were close, and whoever formed a government would need to form a multi-party coalition. Here again, Jacinda showed skill and strength by being able to build bridges with New Zealand First, a socially conservative centrist party, and the Green Party. This required compromises which disappointed much of Labour’s base, yet got Labour into Government so they could implement at least some of their policy agenda.
Over the last five years, Jacinda has held up as a model of progressive political leadership throughout the world. There are many examples of where she has shone as Prime Minister. The best example is her response to the Christchurch Mosque shooting in 2019:
Her statement immediately following the attack against the Christchurch Muslim Community was clear “they are us” , a clear condemnation of Islamophobia by a world leader. When Donald Trump asked what he could do to help Jacinda replied he could show “sympathy and love for muslim communities”
They are us. Three words to the Muslim world showed compassion, humanity and inclusion after an act of evil.
The New Zealand Government’s initial response to the pandemic in 2020 was another example of strong leadership. In crisis management, it is crucial that you quickly assess the relevant information and then act decisively. The decision to close the border and put in tough restrictions was not an easy thing to do, but it undoubtedly saved thousands of lives. Not least as the health system Labour inherited when they came to power in 2017 had been badly underfunded and under-resourced for a decade. After only 30 months in power, there had not been enough time to turn this around. The restrictions were tough both for people in NZ and for people like me living overseas and unable to return. Much as people may now blame Jacinda and the Labour Government for the tough restrictions, they might also want to consider the impact of National’s mismanagement of the health system for nearly a decade. This mismanagement of the health system left it vulnerable to collapse during the pandemic.
In October 2020, Arderns’s Labour Government won the biggest majority of any New Zealand government in half a century. Jacinda’s crisis management and clear communication during Covid, the Mosque shooting and the White Island eruption all contributed to this victory.
After Labour won its second term in office, I outlined some of the challenges the government would face:
The coming term will not be an easy one for Labour, as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to rumble on and the world plunges into the worst financial crisis in decades. On Saturday Labour were rewarded for their handling of the crisis so far, but the hard part is yet to come. On the one hand, they need to rebuild the NZ economy at a time when international tourism is dead and export markets are volatile. But even prior to this the New Zealand economy was unbalanced and in a precarious state. Its over-reliance on dairy exports has made it vulnerable if anything happens to this market and resulted in over-intensive dairy farming which has harmed the environment – not a good look for a country that brands itself as clean and green. It also faces growing inequality with significant growth in homelessness and poverty in recent years.
The above was a fairly accurate summary of the challenges Ardern’s government would face in its second term. What nobody expected at that time was the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the havoc this would cause the world economy, already severely strained by the pandemic. Governments around the world have struggled with this crisis, with New Zealand being no exception. In May 2022 I wrote the following:
In New Zealand, the opposition has been quick to blame the Labour Government in New Zealand for this, at a time when support for the government is falling fast. Having won a record majority in 2020 for their handling of the pandemic, Ardern’s government now faces a backlash over coronavirus restrictions and is taking the blame for current economic challenges. Commentary in the New Zealand media also tends to focus on inflation as a domestic issue, as such much of the commentary is often wide of the mark.
At the start of 2022 there began to be a seachange in New Zealand politics. The Government’s handling of the pandemic had strong support in 2020 and for much of 2021. But as more and more people were vaccinated, and increasingly other countries lifted their travel and other Covid restrictions, public support began to wane. The protests outside the New Zealand parliament in 2022 were a minority of anti-vaccination campaigners. This group, inspired by the January 6 Capitol attack in Washington did not enjoy widespread support. But they demonstrated that the polarisation that other English-speaking democracies faced in recent years had reached New Zealand. Alt-right, anti-science and anti-government protests caused considerable disruption outside parliament in Wellington. Those opposed to the protest became frustrated that the police and government had not moved them on. By the time these protests ended on 10 March 2022, support for the government had taken a hit.
At the same time as these protests and a struggling economy, Jacinda faced a new leader of the opposition. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, National managed to go through three leaders in four months. By the time of the election, they were no longer seen as a credible opposition and suffered their worst election defeat in 18 years. In late 2021 National put forward a new leader, Christopher Luxon. A former CEO of Air New Zealand, Luxon came into parliament in 2020 and was immediately touted as a future leader. Whilst in no way a match for Ardern in terms of oratory or style, Luxon could credibly challenge the Government’s record on bread-and-butter issues like housing, economic management and its slow delivery on infrastructure projects such as light rail in Auckland. Whilst Luxon has trailed Ardern in preferred Prime Minister Polls, for nearly a year National had maintained a 5-7% lead over Labour. At the end of 2022, it felt like Ardern’s government would likely face an electoral loss in 2023.
Critics of Jacinda Ardern have been quick to say that her resignation now was a way of avoiding electoral loss later in the year. Others have pointed to the level of hate and vitriol that Ardern has had to put up with in recent years, including former NZ Prime Minister Helen Clark who said that “Jacinda has faced a level of hatred and vitriol which in my experience is unprecedented in our country.”
One Conservative Canadian politician, Michelle Rempel Garner argues that Justin Trudeau faced many of the same if not greater challenges to Jacinda Ardern in the last year, yet they were treated differently due to their respective genders.
Below is Jacinda Ardern’s resignation speech, I will leave the reader to decide for themselves what her reasons really are:
Jacinda Ardern, announcing her resignation as Prime Minister of New Zealand
It is too soon to say what Jacinda’s legacy will be. She will certainly be remembered for becoming a mother whilst being a world leader. For her presence on the world stage as a voice for feminism and progressive politics. She ushered in a generational and attitudinal change in New Zealand politics. While internationally she offered an alternative to the politics of Trump, Bolsonaro, Scott Morrison and Viktor Orban.
Ultimately, governments are measured on their longevity. Both in terms of how long they are in office, but also how long their policies remain in place. Jacinda Ardern’s legacy will be judged not only on Labour’s successes under her leadership but also on how well Labour performs after her resignation.
On Wednesday, New Zealand will have a new Prime Minister, Chris Hipkins, who will lead Labour into the October 14 General Election. Chris certainly has his work cut out for him over the next few months. That being said, the coming election is by no means a foregone conclusion. For all the challenges of the past five years, he inherits a government that has much to be proud of, not least Jacinda Ardern message of kindness, inclusion and positivity. To quote the outgoing Prime Minister, “bring it on.”
I answer the question posed in the title by returning to what I wrote on my blog when Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019:
Make no mistake, Boris Johnson has talent. He knows how to make a stirring speech and can tap into people’s hopes and fears as a politician
My blog post written shortly after Johnson became UK Prime Minister
Now one might think being the Prime Ministers of the worlds fifth-largest economy requires a great deal more than this, and indeed it does. It requires a mixture of luck, animal cunning and being able to use both to maximum effect.
Above: Prime Minister Boris Johnson and former Chief Advisor Dominic Cummings
My last post in December outlined some of the issues the Conservative Government in the UK had been having in the latter half of 2021. Yet the position still seemed quite recoverable, indeed only a few months earlier, the former Red Wall constituency of Hartlepool had been won by the Conservatives. Local Elections in May 2021 also were very positive for the Tories. Things were bad by the end of 2021, very bad in fact, but it still did not seem fatal.
2022 was not the start of the year the government were hoping for. Despite repeated denials that there was party’s at 10 Downing Street during the lockdown, further evidence emerged that there were, including a photo showing the Prime Minister with staff sitting in the garden at 10 Downing Street having “a work meeting” where there was wine and cheese in May 2020, when social gatherings were illegal in the UK. This was at a time when people could not visit dying loved ones and the public were told not to socialise in this way.
The Prime Minister in the garden at 10 Downing Street in May 2020.
The investigation by Civil Servant Sue Gray found that there were “failures of leadership and judgment by different parts of Number 10 and the Cabinet Office” in allowing these events to occur, and then a number of these events are now being investigated by the Metropolitan Police. None of this was made better by the Prime Minister’s response that nobody had warned him that these parties were against the rules, rules that he had announced as Prime Minister in March 2020.
Former Conservative Prime Minister John Major has said that Johnson broke the rules by holding these parties and believes he should resign. Others close to the Conservative Party including financial donors have also called on him to go.
As Conservative polling takes a hit and MPs get increasingly restless, it is still a surprise to many that Johnson stays on. Indeed most other PM’s would have resigned by now. So why does Boris Johnson stay on and why do the Conservatives let him. For Johnson, he knows if he leaves office now, he’ll likely never return. Having only served in the role just over two and a half years and most of that time leading (badly) during a pandemic, he has to try and stay on. But why on earth do the Conservative Party let him? Because despite everything, including the quite serious long term damage to the reputation of the party and indeed of the United Kingdom, he is probably still their best chance of winning an election.
Boris Johnson does not play by the normal political rules. Many claim Johnson uses the Trump playbook, and his election outcome in 2019 certainly benefited from Trump’s intervention which helped get the Brexit Party not to stand against the Conservatives in crucial leave voting constituencies, specifically the so-called Red-Wall. Yet Johnson plays by his own rules, which include fast and loose morals, including talk of beating up journalists. He has a level of confidence that has helped him get away with things other politicians simply would not. His clown reputation and building the brand “Boris”, the clown who got stuck on a zip wire at the 2012 London Olympics during his time as Mayor.
Johnson won the London Mayoralty by seeing an opportunity, specifically that London voters were tired of Ken Livingston. Further, the clown reputation meant Johnson’s opponents underestimated him in not just one but two London Government elections.
His ascent to the Conservative leadership was far from smooth, with his first attempt in 2016 being undermined by Michael Gove. His record as Foreign Secretary was also far from successful, especially regarding the Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe issue. Yet his stance on Brexit, specifically undermining Theresa May’s attempts to negotiate a withdrawal agreement, paid off.
He proved ruthless in his first few weeks as the leader, withdrawing the Tory whip from 21 MP Conservative MPs who would not back his Brexit plan, including his own brother. His decision to prorogue parliament when he could not get MPs to agree to a general election ultimately worked for him. Despite losing legal challenges to this prorogation, eventually, he got MPs to agree to an early election, winning the best result for the Conservative Party since 1983.
His victory in 2019 was due to two things, tapping into the hopes and fears of those frustrated by attempts to thwart Brexit and a deeply divided opposition. His performances as an orator during this campaign were far from his best work, and despite arguable receiving fairly favourable press coverage during the campaign, felt the need to hide in a fridge to avoid doing a media interview days before the election. Those who in recent weeks, having previously supported Boris Johnson, now believe he is not fit to be prime minister seem to have only just worked out what he is really like when the signs have been there from the start.
One of Johnson’s strengths throughout his career has been his ability to bring people in that can carry him. Dominic Cummings, loathsome as many may find him, was a driving force behind the Brexit campaign in 2016 and the 2019 Conservative election victory. There were of course plenty of others, including some who have been with him since he was mayor of London who has recently quit. The problem with being an advisor or a ‘back roomer’, is that ultimately the candidate will not always do what you wish they would. It is immensely frustrating to feel you are the brain behind the power, yet never to get credit, and worse to have your clever strategy ignored.
The other issue Johnson faces is that despite his show of strength, for better or for worse, in getting Brexit done, he is not ideologically in step with much of the traditional Tory base. This in part explains his appeal to voters who traditionally have not voted Tory, certainly, this proved the case both in London and in the 2019 election. For many Conservatives, winning a strong majority and remaining in power was worth the compromise, even if it meant accepting a level of what the late Margaret Thatcher would have decried as corporatist policy. The recent decision to increase National Insurance has certainly tested the tolerance of many Conservatives who subscribe to the Thatcherite philosophy of low taxation and small government.
As I have written earlier, social care has been a blight on the political landscape and one that neither Labour nor Conservative governments have adequately addressed. With demand for social care increasing, governments have been under pressure to increase funding. Both Blair’s New Labour and Cameron’s Conservative Governments lacked the political courage to increase taxes to pay for social care. Whilst there are strong arguments against the way the government have decided to increase taxes, specifically that rather than an across the board increase to National Insurance there were other options whereby the heaviest burden would have fallen on those best placed to contribute, nonetheless, an increase in taxation to pay for social care was inevitable. Any serious analysis of relying on the private sector and savings to address this need show this is not viable.
Is it a coincidence that the announcement of the National Insurance increase in September 2021 happened just before the government and in particular Boris Johnson started having problems? It would be a mistake to think that the open civil war within the Conservatives under Theresa May was only about Brexit or that the 2019 election result put these to bed. It is quite clear that the stories of lockdown parties and other scandals have been disclosed by people within the government. Plenty of Tory MPs would be quite happy to see Johnson fall or to apply maximum pressure on him so he backs down on the National Insurance increase. Boris Johnson may not be a Thatcherite ideologically, but so far it does seem he is not for turning and understands that doing so would ultimately be more harmful.
For small-government laissez-faire Tories, a leadership challenge may not serve them well. Were Johnson to go, the likely successor would be Rushi Sunak who talks free market but in practice has been one of the most interventionist Chancellors in modern times during the COVID-19 crisis. It is unlikely that Sunak as PM would reverse the National Insurance increase, given he has been its main advocate thus far. The rights favoured candidate, Liz Truss, is simply not credible.
Boris Johnson remains Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He does so, for now, due to the lack of a strong viable alternative within the Conservatives. Despite everything, he is still the leader most likely to help the party regain support, despite him now being severely damaged. Some in the Conservatives may be thinking it best to leave him in place at a time when the cost of living is increasing significantly when the May Council elections will likely not be good for the Conservatives (the particular boroughs having elections this year are less favourable to the Tories, but a backlash to “party gate” will likely play a role) and the National Insurance increase. Better to find a new leader nearer to the election. But this is a risky strategy, as the Prime Minister has damaged not just his reputation, but that of the Conservatives and the government he leads. His attempts at statesmanship during the Ukraine crisis may have helped him a little, but his reputation on the global stage is also tarnished by what has happened at home.
Boris Johnson, should not on balance still be Prime Minister and in the long term, the Conservatives risk being severely punished for not removing him. But despite everything, he remains in post and still, we cannot write him off.
I think on this day I should just really repeat that I am deeply sorry for every life that has been lost and of course as I was prime minister, I take full responsibility for everything that the government has done. We did everything we could to minimise suffering and minimise the loss of life and will continue to do so.
Boris Johnson addressing the nation Tuesday 26 January 2021
Back in May 2020, I wrote a blog which listed the many failings of the UK Governments handling of the crisis. The Prime Minister and his colleagues ignored scientific advise and allowed the virus to take hold throughout the population in February and March 2020. The Prime Minister, in particular, took pride in the fact that he planned to keep the country open even when most other European nations were going into lockdown. It was only when NHS hospitals were near breaking point that Britain followed other nations and implemented similar restrictions.
Above: Prime Minister Boris Johnson giving his address to the nation on Tuesday.
Probably the greatest failing by the Conservative Government in the fight against COVID-19 was not its response to the crisis but the decade of underinvestment in the country’s public health system. Sir Michael Marmot from the UK Institute of Health Equity published a damning report in December 2020 which highlighted that during the last decade of Conservative Government:
people can expect to spend more of their lives in poor health
improvements to life expectancy have stalled, and declined for the poorest 10% of women
the health gap has grown between wealthy and deprived areas
place matters – living in a deprived area of the North East is worse for your health than living in a similarly deprived area in London, to the extent that life expectancy is nearly five years less.
The report also made clear that the above trends, in particular the health gap between wealthy and deprived areas, corresponds with data during the COVID-19 pandemic which found those from poorer parts of the UK were hit harder by the virus.
In May 2020 I posted a blog about the state of UK Social Care where for decades successive governments have failed to resolve the funding crisis, or indeed to build proper links between the health and social care systems. In October 2020 Amnesty International published its report As if Expendable which outlined how many older people were kicked out of hospitals and placed back into residential care homes, without first even being tested for COVID-19. This shameful action, along with not supplying social care providers adequate supplies of PEE was responsible for many thousands of deaths. The Amnesty report highlights that the UK Governments treatment of people in the social care system during this time breached both domestic and international law:
The UK is a state party to international and regional human rights treaties which require it to protect and guarantee fundamental human rights relevant to the concerns addressed in this report, including notably, the right to life, the right to highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, the right to non-discrimination – including on the grounds of age, disability or health status – the right not to be subjected to inhuman or degrading treatment.
As if Expendable, Amnesty International report 2020
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has yet to atone for what happened during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in the social care sector. Whilst this was not just the fault of his government’s failure, his statement on Tuesday shows he still accepts no-fault and claims they did all they could to ‘minimise suffering’ and ‘loss of life’, a claim the Amnesty International report demonstrates is false.
On the issue of face masks, the UK Government lagged behind most many other nations, initially implying that these were not effective, only later to make them mandatory on public transport. The justification for this U-Turn is that by mid-2020 there was more scientific data, which is fine except many other nations applied this scientific advice much earlier. A Centres for Disease Control and Prevention paper published 2004 found that during the 2003 SARS outbreak that wearing a face mask frequently in public places, frequent hand washing, and disinfecting one’s living quarter were effective public health measures to reduce the risk for transmission. Nationalist Britain knows best self-confidence could well have been a factor in the UK Governments refusal to learn from international experience.
Another example of government arrogance in the UK during this crisis was the development of the track and trace system. Whilst most nations have struggled to develop an effective track and trace application, the UK managed to spend 22 billion pounds of public money on a system that did not work. In June 2020 Boris Johnson claimed in parliament that the UK was developing a “world beating” contact tracing system. After billions were given to private contractors, many with personal links to members of the government, the system was found to have failed as it relied on excel spreadsheets to record the data and resulted in 15,000 cases not being recorded in September and October 2020.
The failure to develop a functional track and trace system has led to one of the greatest policy failures that have contributed to England being in its third COVID-19 lockdown. Very few people would disagree that having schools closed and students having to learn remotely is negatively impacting on students. And most people can understand how difficult it is for any government to balance public health against long term educational outcomes. But when the Conservative-leaning paper The Telegraph runs the headline The biggest mystery in politics: why is Gavin Williamson still in a job? you know that the Education Secretary has performed poorly. The recent example where after Christmas schools reopened for one day in January before closing again due to high infection rates, despite the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) warning the UK Government on 22 December 2020 that with the new strain of COVID-19 leaving schools open was contributing to the rising infection rate. A poll conducted earlier this month found that 92% of teachers believe Gavin Williamson should resign as Education Secretary, which is hardly given surprising his abysmal performance in recent months.
The Above graph shows how COVID-19 infection rates rose sharply after UK schools reopened in September
Yet the blame for schools does not sit fully with the Government. Her Majesty’s loyal opposition can also take much of the blame for this fiasco. In April 2020, at the height of the first wave of coronavirus pandemic in the UK, newly elected Labour Party Opposition Leader Kier Starmer called on the Government to set out plans to end the lockdown. Starmer, former head of the Crown Prosecution Service and a QC would argue that he meant that there should be a plan which included contact tracing, social distancing guidelines and other measures to make it safe to reopen. But the optics of the call was pressuring the UK Government to lift restrictions and specifically calling on them to reopen schools. Unlike in a court of law, in politics, it is about the key message, not the detail buried on page 7 of the affidavit.
The Oppositions position on schools has been nearly as confusing and contradictory as the Governments. The Party, still recovering from its 2019 election loss (which I wrote several blogs about in early 2020), under a new leader was trying to rebrand, reposition and appeal to voters it had lost. This has not been helped by the internal factionalism (which I also blogged about in May 2020) and the party still not being clear where it sits politically and ideologically. In April 2020 shadow Education Secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey’s position was that schools should reopen when safe, a position that was consistent with the education unions. Shortly after this Long-Bailey was replaced as Education Secretary by Kate Green, who has been clear that she wishes to distance Labour from the education unions in an attempt to present the party as more ‘moderate’.
Green and Starmer’s position throughout this has been motivated by a policy of triangulation and policy by focus group whereby they are appealing to middle-class parents who want their kids back at school. Like the Tories, Labour’s position has been motivated by politics, not science. That former Conservative Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt called for schools to close earlier this month before the opposition is telling. Meanwhile the leader of the opposition was being grilled by media for his confusing position. Many believe that Green was appointed due to her loyalty to Starmer just as Williamson has kept his role due to loyalty to Boris Johnson. One would be more concerned if either appointment were based on ability as this would say a great deal about the capability of the other 648 MPs in the Commons if these two are the best and brightest on offer for education.
The issue of schools reopening is a personal one for me. In my blog earlier this month, I told of how my partner who works as a secondary school teacher in London caught COVID-19 and how we both spend Christmas and New Year recovering from the illness. When Greenwich Council tried to close schools in the borough due to skyrocketing infection rates, Education Secretary Gavin Williamson threatened legal action to keep the schools open. By this time, most schools in the area had a significant percentage of students sick, or in isolation having been in contact with someone infected. In many schools, pupils were sent home due to the number of teachers off sick with COVID-19. To argue that continuing with this situation is any better for secondary school students is nonsense.
Much of the concern over school closures is the impact on students’ grades. When the Government announced GCSE and A-level exams would be cancelled once again in 2021 this added to the anxiety. One of the issues here has been this Government’s shift towards having student grades mostly assessed through examinations. This style of assessment favours certain learners over others, as exams favour those with short term recall skills. Many other countries have moved away from a full examination model of assessment to a mix of exams and course work assignments during the year. But aside from implementing a poor education assessment model for students, the pandemic has highlighted the risk of placing so much emphasis on examinations as, if for whatever reason, these cannot go ahead, it becomes difficult to determine student grades. The UK Government’s position on education and assessment is blinkered and ideological, which has meant it struggled to come up with sensible pragmatic solutions to this problem during the crisis. Worse, the Education Secretary has demonstrated he lacks the intellectual rigour and leadership to address these issues.
A coherent and strong opposition would have easily made political mileage during this time, however to date, the opposition has opted for triangulation and timidity. The opposition MP who has made the clearest and most articulate statements regarding school closures during the pandemic has been Lisa Nandy the Shadow Foreign Secretary, who came a distant third in the 2020 UK Labour leadership contest. What Nandy had to say was hardly earth-shattering, merely that the Government needed to get testing and track and trace working properly before it would be safe to reopen schools. To be fair, Starmer, Green and Long-Bailey probably also thought they were saying the same thing, but what people heard was quite different.
Prime Minister Johnson’s non apology on Tuesday was an insult to the British public. Yes, this was a difficult crisis and all governments have made some mistakes at this time. But the UK has done particularly badly and the statement on Tuesday shows he has learnt nothing. The Conservatives won the 2019 election with the sizeable majority that they did largely due to Brexit (see my blog post immediately after the 2019 UK election) and divisions within the opposition. Boris Johnson is not a strong leader and in this crisis, he has proved to be woefully inept. It is well known that Johnson likes to compare himself to former Conservative Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in which case the COVID-19 pandemic has been his Gallipoli.
At a time when the country is in its third lockdown, when over 100,000 people have died, when the economy is in recession and the number of jobless is set to rise, few now are looking to the next election which will likely be held in 2024. Yet that still motivates leaders of the UK’s two main political parties. Polling numbers in recent months have been fairly close between Labour and the Conservatives. Where polling has been much more consistent is in Scotland, where the SNP maintain a strong lead heading into the Scottish Parliament’s election on 6 May 2021. Support for Scottish independence also maintains a strong lead and as I predicted in my blog post nearly a year ago this issue continuing to feature prominently on the political agenda, despite fierce opposition from political leaders in London. Without a doubt, independence campaigners in Scotland, as well as Northern Ireland and Wales, continue to win support for their independence calls on the back of the UK Governments inept handling of this crisis.
There is however hope on the horizon. The Governments rollout of the COVID-19 vaccinations will hopefully in time slow the movement of the virus to a point where current restrictions can be lifted. It is a wonder of modern science that within a year of COVID-19 emerging that scientists, including those at Oxford University, have developed a vaccination. Despite concern by some about the speed with which this has been released, the evidence so far is that widespread vaccination will stop the spread and save thousands of lives. Credit where credit is due, the UK Government have been quick off the mark to get this vaccine available to the most vulnerable with the aim of immunising as many people as possible over the next year. And to the oppositions credit, they have supported the Government on the vaccine rollout.
There is still a long way to go until this crisis ends and the Government have a lot to answer for badly mishandling things to date. The Prime Ministers apology on Tuesday did not cut the mustard and was an insult to the families of those who have died. Lessons from the mistakes over the last year need to be learnt and with this, the Prime Minister needs to cut the bombast and bravado and instead learn humility and humbleness. The successful rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine will be essential not only for ending the crisis but also for rebuilding trust in public trust British state after it has managed this pandemic so badly.
Two years ago I wrote a short pithy little blog about New Years and the self-reflecting navel gazing that traditionally occurs during this time. It can be viewed here.
The end of 2020 was quite different. This is the case for most of us, but for me it ends a very eventful year. It also ended with me having testing positive for COVID-19. I have spent much of the last week feeling unwell and exhausted.
2020 was not easy for anyone. A global pandemic which as of 31 December 2020 had killed 1.8 million people and infected over 83 million. It has plunged the world economy into an economic recession that could well take years to recover from. For many this year will be very memorable for all the wrong reasons.
Spitting Image depiction of The Coronavirus with UK PM Boris Johnson
2020 was not an entirely bad year for me though. Both in terms of my professional and personal life, 2020 was actually been positive. Just under a year ago I started working in the House of Lords with Baroness Greengross. I have had the privilege of working in the House of Lords at a time when it adapted to the pandemic by having virtual proceedings and moved to online voting. Whilst having worked remotely much of the year, I still have an office in Westminster which I will return to in 2021.
Personally, things have also gone well. I started a new relationship earlier in the year and we recently moved in together. Also, throughout 2020 I have continued to build and strengthen my friendship networks in London, especially in the South East where I live. I am very lucky to have good friends around me, especially at a time when I have come down with COVID-19.
The virus itself came from my partner who works as a teacher at a London secondary school. Infection rates have been climbing steadily in recent weeks and just before Christmas she caught the dreaded lurgy. When we both got tested on the 18 December she tested positive and I negative, but within a few days it was clear I had also contracted the it.
I could write a whole post about how well the UK government have responded to the pandemic in 2020. I may do this at a later time. Suffice to say 2020 ended with London in Tier 4 restrictions meaning much of the city was closed and people advised against going out or leaving their local area. Needless to say having to stay home for New Years Eve was no great hardship when very little was happening in the city. Earlier plans of heading to Edinburgh for Hogmanay will also have to wait until another year when Scotland is not under COVID-19 restrictions.
So, is the virus as bad as it has been made out? Well for me the symptoms were flu like, high temperature, headaches, blocked nose and sore throat. The fatigue is probably the worst feature of this virus. From Boxing Day till 29 December I was mostly bedridden and living off ibuprofen and Lemsip. Luckily I can still taste food, though it became clear my sense of smell had dulled when I could not smell Vicks Vapour rub or coffee – which anyone else would think my flat stinks of right now. The worse feature of the virus was the fatigue and reduced energy levels which I started feeling the week before Christmas and persisted long other other symptoms had passed.
As of now I feel better. My concentration is improving but still reduced. I am very aware that despite having done little over the last few days my body is still tired. I hope energy levels restore to something resembling normal fairly quickly in 2021. I am lucky in that already the symptoms of COVID-19 begin to fade which is not the case for many others who have caught this virus.
2021 will also be a very different year. We all hope the situation starts to improve in the coming weeks and months, but the reality for the UK is that restrictions on peoples lives will remain in place for some time yet. International travel will also remain limited. It is highly unlikely that I will be able to visit family and friends in New Zealand until 2022, as quarantine restrictions and flight options being very limited and expensive at this time. Zoom has been great for keeping families connected throughout 2020 and will continue to provide this important role again in 2021. It is not the same as actual face to face contact which once this pandemic is over is something many of us will relish.
Four days into the New Year and the UK Government has announced that England will be returning to a full lockdown. This will include schools doing remote learning, something that SAGE told advised should happen before Christmas. How long this lockdown will last and how soon things finally return to normal in 2021 is not clear.
One thing that is the same as New Years two years ago, I have once again changed my calendar.
Throughout 2020 there have been many fascinating twists and turns in the tale of how we as a species have tried to overcome the COVID-19 virus. Some nations like the United States or Brazil have not managed so well, whilst others like New Zealand or Vietnam at first seemed to be faring much better, though now have also seen the virus sneak back in.
In a pandemic like this there is no playbook, and governments and health officials are forced to learn and adapt as they go along. One can understand that along the way there will be various mistakes, and all but the very angry and militant few would seriously expect governments to get everything right during this time.
One important lesson early on in the crisis was back in April when Singapore, who were seen as one of the world leaders in defeating this virus suddenly faced a spike. Singapore was far better prepared than many other nations having learnt lessons from the 2003 SARS and 2009 H1N1 outbreaks. Singapore is well known for its focus on public hygiene and encouraging its citizens to wear face masks and wash their hands is nothing new. By early April it seemed Singapore were weathering the storm, but then things went wrong.
As outlined in this April CNN report, clusters of migrant workers living in poor overcrowded housing were found to have the disease. From here the virus quickly spread again meaning the city state went from very few cases in March to over 1000 in April. It took Singapore until August to reduce COVID-19 infection rates to their March 2020 levels.
The above graph shows the COVID-19 infection rates in Singapore from March to October 2020
In contrast to many other nations Singapore has still managed this pandemic very well. But by neglecting its most vulnerable and not providing safe and healthy accommodation to its migrant workers, the country undermined the public health for all people living in this city state.
There will be many lessons coming out of the 2020 pandemic. But the lesson here is clear, if you do not look after the poor and vulnerable in your community, ultimately you undermine the health and wellbeing of everyone.
In late February the International Longevity Centre’s (ILC UK) held a launch of their Prevention in an ageing world report which highlights the importance of prevention to reduce long term illness and disability in later life. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the release of this report was overshadowed, ironically by a virus where prevention was key to saving lives.
This report highlights that in response to the 2008 financial crisis, global spending on prevention in healthcare was one of the first areas to be cut. It also has been one of the last areas of healthcare spending to get a funding boost as the world started to recover from this economic slowdown.
Life expectancy has been increasing in recent decades; however, many people are not living these extra years in good health. The UK Government has a strategy of supporting people enjoy at least 5 extra healthy, independent years of life by 2035. Unless the Government invests in prevention in health care systems it will struggle to achieve this goal. According to the ILC UK there are 27.1 million people in the world living with preventable disabilities, and this figure is set to increase significantly over the coming decades unless policy makers start to seriously address this.
One of the other issues addressed in this report is that investing in people living longer healthier lives will have an economic return. This would allow older people to continue working so valuable skills and experience can be utilised. People being healthier in older age means this demographic are likely to be spending more thus contributing to the economy in that way. Focusing on prevention in healthcare will help ease pressure on the NHS and hospitals by reducing the number of people needing acute care for preventable conditions.
The ILC UK have published three key themes which would help make prevention in healthcare a reality. These are listed below:
The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of prevention in healthcare. Those most vulnerable to the virus were those with underlying health conditions. The UK Government have today announced a strategy to tackle obesity and part of their justification for this was that excess weight puts individuals at risk of worse outcomes from coronavirus. So, whilst the ILC UK report may not have received the initial attention that it deserved, its content is relevant during this current global health crisis.
Nick Kelly 