The Long Game

Lots of people both expert and pseudo-expert have questioned the UK Government’s strategy in dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic. Many have suggested massive incompetence of the Executive which announced it was alternately following then ignoring then selecting then directing ‘The Science’ and since science logically is based only on facts and is essentially unchangeable then this seemed an impossible task.

Some have sympathised with Johnson’s position, having successfully cut us off from all our European trading and support partners at the beginning of 2020 he would have expected a relaxed discussion over the detail of the Withdrawal Agreement in the twelve months until the tarmac had set on the Kent lorry parks. However this was not to be as the inscrutable orientals had other plans.

His chief adviser, the equally inscrutable Dom Cummings, realised the potential of Covid-19 early on. By February he had spotted the opportunity to rid his fiefdom of all its unproductive elements in one go. Supported by rogue elements of SAGE – the ‘Scientists‘ he embarked on promoting a plan of something called ‘herd immunity’, dripping the poisonous idea into the blond buffoon’s ear. It seemed ideal, let the virus pass through the population and create a permanent immunity in record time making him, via his blond puppet, the Superman of Capitalism. This would get rid of swathes of the old, the poor and the infirm, a permanent drain on the public purse. It had worked with measles, smallpox and chicken pox. Simples!

The only snag was that these examples were generally non-lethal and most had a vaccine to protect those most vulnerable. When the world at large pointed this out, the strategy of ‘herd immunity’ was quickly dumped, never to be spoken of again. Or was it? Let’s look more closely.

The general strategy adopted by the rest of the world except Sweden was to restrict contact through lockdown, test for infection and trace those potentially infected, isolating, testing again and reducing the numbers of infected as fast as possible. New Zealand, with a land area of 268,000 square kilometres similar to that of the UK, but with a tenth of the population, was hugely successful by immediately closing borders and locking down its population with a ‘zero-Covid19’ strategy.

And it worked. Twenty five deaths overall, comparable to the Isle of Man which had 24 deaths over the same period. Extrapolate upwards to account for the difference in population and the comparable death rate would be 300 while the UK boasts a ‘world beating’ 42,000 using the most sympathetic measuring protocol or 65,000 excess deaths if measured by the Office of National Statistics. So why do we seem to be doing so badly?

1. Our first deviation from the advice offered by the World Health Organisation was to keep our borders fully open throughout the pandemic. Where Spain closed its borders within weeks (and New Zealand within days) this conveniently situated island opened its borders to every potential carrier in the world, only latterly imposing a voluntary two week ‘stay at home’ instruction to visitors from a rapidly changing list of countries with still no testing at ports or airports.
   At the height of the pandemic in March we were still taking in 1.4 million visitors a month. Now we are locking down selective towns and cities we are still taking in 3,800,000 visitors a month (Source: visitbritain.org). More than half a million of those came from the most infected country in the world, the USA. If we had closed our ports and airports to foreign visitors on the same date as Spain stopped flights into Tenerife on 12th March then our infection rate would have been measured in hundreds rather than tens of thousands per week.
   So why would we not do this? We had almost a month advance warning of what every other country was trying to do. Importing infection into the country would only spread it wider and faster across the population. Which would be the best way to achieve herd immunity….. oops!
   
2. Next the WHO recommended a strategy of ‘test, test, test’ suggesting that countries put all their efforts into a testing and tracing regime which quickly identified infected people and then traced and, where possible, isolated those capable of spreading the infection. Most countries like Germany, Italy and inevitably New Zealand took this to heart and rapidly created and then improved a testing regime which did the job and gave them a platform on which to prioritise their health services.
   What did the UK do? After ignoring the testing regime for some time it then offered a paltry 4,000 tests a day. Clearly the Executive didn’t see the need for mass testing. In fact even in late September the Prime Minister was saying: “Testing and tracing has very little or nothing to do with the spread or the transmission of the disease.”
   Most recently the ‘NHS Test and Trace’ app has experienced a huge number of problems by being inefficiently designed. The fact is that it isn’t an ‘NHS’ app but one developed privately by a company linked to the Tory party and under a massive £12billion contract which was never subjected to competitive tender. The app failed to track thousands of contacts of infected people, its software was designed to set too high a level on purpose and the private company operating the ‘trace’ component of the system failed to contact even half the affected contacts.
   One has to be concerned about a process which may tell you at any given moment that someone you may have been in contact with may have contracted the virus and therefore you must isolate yourself for fourteen days. This might well cost you your job, your livelihood, your possible promotion or even your relationship. Who, under the circumstances, would answer the call from an unlisted number bearing such news. The lack of an effective testing system and inability to trace infected people is crucial to reducing the spread of the disease. Promising then failing to deliver a system seems almost deliberate considering that the lack of control inevitably leads to much higher infection rates and eventual progress towards herd immunity. Umm!
   
3. The final part of the slow progression towards widespread infection is the contradictory series of restrictions, u-turns and selective lockdowns which change on an almost daily basis. If you had to point to areas of societal activity where infection spread was most likely then that would be schools, universities and social gatherings.
   So what does this government do? It bans outdoor meetings with friends but allows indoor drinking with strangers. It bans children playing football together – the same children who spend all day together in the foetid environment which is the modern school. It insists that you go to your unsterile workplace wherever possible, travelling on enclosed public transport and, with ‘Eat out to Help Out’ to encouraging city lunches and busy dining the spread is almost guaranteed.
   If you then encourage young adults to mix in a carefree university environment and then confine them to their halls of residence you are doing almost everything you can to create super spreading environment. Super spreading leads to a higher percentage of the population becoming infected and progressing towards the holy grail of herd immunity.

The Government did all this and more under the guise of ‘following the science’ while conveniently ignoring the science if it conflicted with more mercenary considerations. Whatever we may believe, some facts are indisputable. The UK has an unenviable record in comparison with the rest of the world both in the number of cases and the appalling level of additional deaths. A considerable number of Tory donors, friends and hangers-on will have made a considerable amount of money after this pandemic dies away. The effect of the Government’s actions combined with the disastrous negotiations of a ruinous exit from the European Union will be with us for a generation.

There is an old Chinese curse – “May you live in interesting times”. It’s impossible not to imagine that these are ‘interesting times’ brought on in part by a virus which originates in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Which sci fi author could have imagined it?

Democracy suffers a mic(ro) drop?

No 10’s war with the civil service is only the beginning

This article is reprinted from The Independent with full acknowledgement. Statements made by Jonathan Powell.

The Boris Johnson-Dominic Cummings “hard rain” war against the civil service is deeply troubling. I say this having long been an advocate of civil service reform, overseeing three changes in cabinet secretaries in No 10 and as a diplomat who became a special adviser.

I think appointing David Frost as national security adviser is a mistake because he has no background in national security and because he can’t possibly concentrate on the Brexit negotiations and national security at the same time.

Sacking Mark Sedwill is the prime minister’s prerogative but to do so in the middle of the coronavirus crisis is disgraceful. Requiring a successor to take a pro-Brexit pledge, as Michael Gove appears to suggest, would be even more outrageous.

Approaching civil service reform in this scorched earth fashion won’t bring about real reform but will just build up passive resistance among the civil servants. Or even worse it will lead them to roll over in the face of the threat of losing their jobs and stop providing honest advice.

What really worries me though is that this looks like the beginning of a rolling coup. It starts with the civil service then moves on to the judiciary and the BBC. In the absence of a written constitution, we depend on rules and conventions to provide checks and balances on an over mighty executive.

Once a government starts driving a coach and horses through those rules we have precious little by way of protection. Consider the alleged behaviour of the planning minister Robert Jenrick, and the failure of Johnson to take action.

The defence rolled out by the government is that the Americans make political appointments to public service jobs. That is to show extraordinary ignorance about the chronic problems in the American system.

The whole top layer of the public service, as well as thousands of jobs (including ambassadors), change every time the president changes. It means there is no continuity in government, many jobs not being filled at all during a presidency, and that pretty much all administrative decisions are politicised. Consider for example the fate of the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump.

It was in this way the populist wars against the constitutional system began in Hungary and the Czech Republic. They had elections, but they gradually began to undermine the judiciary and the public service until there was no check on the leader’s decisions.

Of course that is how Trump has behaved in sacking any public servant he felt was disloyal by whistleblowing or who he – often mistakenly – thought was opposed to him and using the government for his personal advantage. Read John Bolton’s book.

People will say this is overstated. This is Britain, we are a democracy and we will muddle through somehow. But that’s what people said in Poland and Hungary and that’s what people said as Trump took over. It didn’t prevent the alarming degradation of their political systems. Unless a few individuals had been brave enough to stand up to the populists we wouldn’t now see the possibility of reversing their rise in all of these countries.

The corruption of constitutional order can happen very quickly and reversing it can take a very long time and at huge cost. Of course, it is an election that allows us to change governments who behave in such a way. But our election is four years off and so we have to rely on Conservative MPs, who keep Johnson-Cummings in office, to have the courage to stop this drift or replace them, and the pressure of the opposition to hold the government to account. They will only fulfil their roles if people realise what is happening and begin to resist.

Jonathan Powell was Downing Street chief of staff from 1997 to 2007

Lighthouse Labs – showing the way?

An investigation funded by The Independent has uncovered widespread concern over the “Lighthouse Lab” system for processing coronavirus tests.

UPDATE: …and now wow! https://apple.news/AXZekJbGoRaOgzansq5kQ5w

Experts including Sir Paul Nurse, Nobel laureate and director of the Francis Crick Institute in London, have branded the decision to commission the ‘Lighthouse’ laboratories – funnelling millions to private companies – a tactical mistake that was made too late, without consultation and remains shrouded in mystery

It was decided that a centralised approach would be more efficient and give greater control, rather than mobilising NHS or academic labs, and funding them to expand operations. This may have been a mistake, freezing out existing public sector laboratories in order to create private businesses.

Sir Paul Nurse, told The Independent he believed it had been a mistake for the government not to mobilise local laboratories across the country.

“I reached out to Downing Street early on but it seems that the local route was not even considered,” he said. “That was a tactical error in my view, because it was self-evident from the beginning that a locally managed solution would have been effective.

It was needed until the big labs got going, which was going to take time given the lack of preparation.

What we did at The Crick could have been done and activated at university and medical school labs across the country, which were dormant because of lockdown.

“Our local Crick lab can turn around tests in 24 hours, even under 12 hours. In these big labs it’s been as long as five days – that is next to useless. There was a failure to think creatively about how to deal with testing and the decision to set up these labs has been shrouded in mystery, at least to me. Who made the decision? Why was it made? Who advised on it? What did it cost?”

What is clear is that it was expensive, accused of contracting irregularities and not as reliable as promised. Perhaps unsurprising since it was overseen by accountancy giant Deloitte, fined for Serco tagging scandal and improperly awarded contracts in South Africa.

See the full article here.