The main charge is that Johnson’s government took too long to take the virus seriously, which meant that it had an inadequate test regime, shut down too late and obsessively tried to handle the crisis from London. As a result, the United Kingdom has suffered the most deaths in Europe and the fifth most in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University.
During the crisis, Johnson’s government has suffered several embarrassing scandals – from its chief adviser being accused of breaking lockdown rules to a messy U-turn after national confusion over schoolchildren’s exam results led to protests in London.
Unfortunately for Johnson, life is probably not much easier this fall. After an eventful summer, UK lawmakers return to Parliament on 1 September, giving Johnson’s opponents in the Labor Party – re-elected under the leadership of Keir Starmer – a forum to hold him accountable, as several crises between each other run at the end of the year.
September is the month that large swaths of the country will attempt to return to some degree of normalcy. Students will return to schools and universities, which means parents who were forced to stay home to provide childcare can return to work.
After failing to get children back to school earlier this summer, it will be vital for Johnson to make new week a successful start to the new school year in England. “I’ve talked before about the moral obligation to open schools safely to all students, and I want to thank the school staff who spent the summer months making classes Covid-secured in preparation for a full return in September,” Johnson said in a statement. statement released Sunday night.
It is “vitally important” for all children to return to school after months of traffic, Johnson said.
The statement was widely interpreted in the British media as an attempt to prove that Johnson got a grip on matters. But as more of the UK opens up, the risk of a spike increases in cases of coronavirus. “All of these things could spread the virus again, because potential contacts would be significantly increased,” said Simon Clarke, associate professor of cellular microbiology at the University of Reading. He adds that if autumn rolls in the winter, “people might think they have a normal cough when cold and carry the virus to work, school or university.”
Returning students to universities could pose a certain risk, said Rob Ford, professor of politics at the University of Manchester. “It will be a miracle if we do not have a major shutdown within a month after the start of the university term,” he said. “About 500,000 students travel from all over the country to mingle together in high-density student housing and campuses.”
Supporters of the government claim it is essential for the UK economy, which contracted by 20% in the last quarter, to reopen. But experts are raising health concerns about the consequences. “If we go back to the same level of contact we had in March, we will go back to the same level of epidemic growth,” Graham Medely, professor of infectious disease modeling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told CNN.
This would be politically difficult to deal with. “It is very possible that we will need another round of extremely interventional lockdowns, and within six months of the first lockdown, they have thrown good will away by looking like an incompetent muggle,” Ford said.
Brexit challenges ahead
Another challenge in the autumn is the rush for the UK to conclude a post-Brexit trade agreement with the European Union. While both sides are committed to reaching an agreement, talks have not progressed significantly at some point. The current transition period with the EU expires on 31 December.
Johnson, of course, led the campaign to leave the EU in 2016, resigned from Theresa May’s government over what he called the softness of its Brexit policy, and ran his leadership campaign on a promise to take a tougher line with Brussels.
A UK government source, not authorized to speak on the plate, told CNN that although a deal “can be done” by early October – the absolute last date in the eyes of the UK – but that ” does not mean it will. “The source added that Brussels’s negotiators did not yet fully understand the UK’s position and that lack of process and a ticking clock meant the mood was gloomier than in previous rounds.
This feeling of not being understood is reciprocal. An EU official, also unauthorized to speak on the plate, said: “There needs to be a better understanding and awareness of our position and the reality of what it means to leave the EU.” That source thinks the UK “holds in the hope that everything will work out in the end”, but notices that position is “full of risk” and could result in a quick deal that is not very worthwhile.
The time frame is full because so much has to happen between every agreement that is reached and it becomes legally binding. Anton Spisak, a former Brexit cabinet official, said that “even after a political deal is done, government lawyers need to ‘scrub’ the text to make sure it actually works legally, a process that can take months. “The problem for Boris Johnson is that he has set himself the deadline of the end of the year, that he needs to find some legal solution to prevent the potential cliff edge from falling.”
Georgina Wright, a senior researcher at the Institute for Government think tank, said the ratification process for the EU “means a vote in the Council (grouping of 27 member states) and the EU parliament by 31 December,” adding that the parliament has been “very clear that it will not escape an agreement – its last sitting is on December 14.”
The economic implications of no-deal are well known, but given the pandemic there could be political implications as well. “If there is no deal, there is a real danger that both sides will spiral down and blame each other, possibly ending up in a nasty standoff,” said Anand Menon, professor of European politics at King’s College, London. “In the early days of the pandemic, we saw the UK’s unwillingness to work with key areas with the EU. How bad could that be if talks ended in October, then the virus would spread in November?”
Of course, it could be the case that schools and universities reopen without any problems and the economy starts to hit back. The gloom around Brexit talks could lay the groundwork for a wonderful breakthrough. It is quite possible that Johnson will end the year with his Brexit deal and keep the country on its way out of the pandemic, head on.
Or everything can go wrong. “A spike in the virus, Brexit speaks ill, schools and universities have to close down. All these things combined would create a tornado for the government,” Ford said. “And if they treat these crises as indecently as they have treated almost anything else, the opposition just needs to start over and continue to damage their credibility.”
However, the next four months will not be easy for Johnson. Even if everything goes the way he wants, so much of how that happens is out of the hands of the Prime Minister. And when the worst comes, he may have to deal with the inescapable reality of making some difficult decisions about how the British may celebrate the Christmas period.
.
