The people at the centre of the UK government “don’t talk about an exit strategy”, says someone who is well placed to know. “They talk about learning to live with this.” That is clearly true. Without a vaccine or proven treatments there is no exit from coronavirus, only management. As yet, there is also no settled strategy. The government has a sense of how lockdown might be eased and phased. All agree that the only viable approach for easing lockdown is mass community testing and contact tracing. But ministers are tussling over how far to drive the virus spread down before easing restrictions. Matt Hancock, health secretary, argues that squashing the rate of spread before easing will help efforts to control it. Michael Gove, the government’s chief fixer, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, want to move earlier to minimise the economic hit. Yet those arguing for early easing are doing so without the necessary infrastructure. Testing capacity is still too low. A planned app to warn those who have come into contact with a carrier is not yet ready to deploy. Thousands of contact-tracing staff must be recruited and trained. Arguments for face-mask use look more about supply than science. Without the tools of virus suppression in place, this is less a strategy than a suck-it-and-see approach. It is also true, however, that debate is afflicted by political divisions, with the ending of restrictions becoming a proxy battle for the fight over the nature of post-lockdown society. For now, those at the extremes of the argument are not those at the centre of the decision-making. But those erring on the dovish side worry about the increasing hawkishness of Tories, who fear not only the economic cost but a return to Big Statism. It is striking how many of the hawks come from one of two often intersecting Conservative camps, the leading lights of the Leave campaign and a claque of the government’s media outriders clustered around the Spectator magazine, an outfit whose diaspora also includes Boris Johnson, the UK prime minister, and his chief strategist, Dominic Cummings. One lockdown sceptic, Toby Young, a Gove ally and associate editor at the magazine, has set up a website to argue that the lives saved are being overvalued and the costs understated. Both Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings are less hawkish and worry premature easing may lead to a second peak and more economic damage. But the instincts of the Spectocracy are often aligned and find favour with this government. Even so, there is something else going on here, beyond a debate about lockdown, which is why the influence of those pushing it matters. Having seen the left use the crisis to demand policy changes from higher taxes to nationalisation, the right is fighting back. Its thinkers see an opportunity to use fears over jobs to drive a deregulatory, free market agenda and oppose social policies they dismiss as “wokery”.
Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Daniel Hannan, one of the founders of Vote Leave, took aim at diversity targets: “When a million more people are on the dole, does anyone think it will be a priority to publish gender pay gaps? . . . Or whether the chief scientific adviser and chief medical officer are privately educated white men?” He went on to liken the lockdown to the dream state for climate change activists, adding: “It will be awkward, after this, to argue that . . . we should all be prepared to suffer a little for the sake of the planet.” Mr Hannan’s argument is typically puckish but also telling. He is right that resurrecting the economy is going to take precedence over many other issues. It will be speedily endorsed by those with other agendas. Companies will call for the lifting of tiresome regulations, measures to hit the 2050 target for a carbon-zero economy will be assailed for loading extra costs on business, risking jobs and hobbling recovery. Even more telling, though, is the attempt to set up gender equality and ethnic diversity as the enemies of prosperity. Equal pay or food on plates is not really the choice. Can it be that culture wars are even infecting the coronavirus crisis? It is a troubling harbinger. The crisis will be used as an excuse to hammer pet peeves, so tackling injustice or fighting climate change will now be depicted as inimical to jobs and growth. Mr Johnson has not reached this place and may not. But his ideological outriders have. After weeks in which the left made the running, the post-lockdown battle lines are being drawn. As hardship bites, the worry will be whether he listens to those offering not just economic arguments but a new culture war as a route out of unpopularity. Battle has been rejoined. Everything may have changed, but there’s a lot that looks the same.
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