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At the heart of England’s passage through the Covid-19 era are two key factors that have combined to create a mess of failures and setbacks.
One is the simple incompetence of the government. The other focuses on a centralized system of power and administration that is no longer functioning, something that is now vividly manifesting itself in almost every aspect of the crisis, from the way that rules and restrictions are being imposed in places without warning, to a test and … monitoring system whose dysfunction has been clear for months. Put the two together and you end the drama that now repeats over and over again: hapless, desperate people at the top, trying to fight the pandemic using machinery that has long since rusted to the point of uselessness, while in the field insist they could do a better job if given the opportunity.
“We have a strange system of government in this country, don’t we? A remote, London-centric operation that doesn’t trust the local government, doesn’t invest in it, doesn’t believe in it. “Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham told me that last week, while talking about his leading role in an increasingly furious revolt against a government approach that has managed to be both chaotic and dictatorial, and the inadequacy of Rishi Sunak’s pay plan – people affected by business closures only two-thirds of their lost wages.
The night before speaking, the media had begun reporting on the imminent prospect of the forced closure of pubs, bars and restaurants in “the north of England” wherever it may be, and by implication even more bad economic news. for Greater Manchester. But no one in government had raised this possibility in online meetings with ministers that Burnham had attended earlier that week. Instead, news of these new “hospitality” measures had initially surfaced in a blog written by ITV News political editor Robert Peston. Then, the times showed a preview of a front page with the headline “Restaurants and pubs in the north forced to close again.” This is how Burnham and other leaders in the parts of England hardest hit by the pandemic discovered their fate.
This is not the way to govern a country, especially in the middle of a pandemic. But it keeps happening. Burnham describes his dealings with ministers as “sporadic.” He says that the meetings that decide new restrictions are like “a papal conclave, where no one else knows anything,” and that now he is used to finding out what is about to hit Greater Manchester through the media. “This is how they have governed throughout this process,” he told me. “These are nightly briefings for the newspapers. It’s like a political campaign, not a government communications operation. “
What all this means in the everyday world is obvious. If policymaking is shut down to the point of being clandestine, and mayors, municipal leaders, local officials, and voices on the ground stay on the sidelines, the restrictions and the economic and social measures that must accompany them will break down. Serie. .
Burnham’s most pressing fear is that if Greater Manchester and other areas are subjected to the harsh rules the government is going to put on top of its new three-tier system, the results could be disastrous. You fear being “stuck at level 3 all winter” without significant financial support for workers or businesses. And if that happens, “the leveling will be over, certainly as far as this government is concerned.”
The same day that I spoke to Burnham, I called Alice Wiseman, Gateshead’s director of public health. There, the infection numbers are reaching very worrying levels and the challenges facing someone in such a crucial role stretch far into the distance. Last time we spoke, he expressed deep concern about the lack of detailed information on local Covid cases in the government’s centralized testing system, something that had improved, although other issues had now emerged.
As far as she knew, the failure of the national test and trace system to record 16,000 Covid-19 cases and trace their contacts resulted in a large drop in the rate of people in her area who were successfully contacted from 67% to 52%. . , with obvious consequences: “Only half of the people in my area have been reported as potentially a close contact. You have another half wandering around Gateshead, not knowing that they could be infected with Covid and infecting other people. “
His accounts of waiting for news of new restrictions echoed what Burnham told me. In the last week of September, for example, the government was about to announce new rules that mean households in Gateshead and elsewhere could no longer meet indoors, which would take effect at midnight the same day. “This was on a Tuesday night,” Wiseman said. “And I had to stay on my computer, hitting update. I emailed the Department of Health and Welfare at 9 o’clock to say, ‘I’m really worried because they haven’t given us the regulations, we have three hours to go.’ I sent an email again at 10 o’clock. I emailed again at 11: I said, ‘Hi, is anyone there?’ Soon after, they finally sent him a link to the new restrictions that would affect his area 60 minutes later. Fortunately, the lawyers employed by the council had stayed up late to discuss its implications, but that was not the point.
Last week, Labor leaders from a handful of big English cities put forward five headline proposals to propel the fight against coronavirus to the grassroots, focusing on a much larger role for councils in deciding the restrictions and a test and … tracking system (whatever the weekend rumors of the regrettably belated government action on this, note that a system that would be “local by default” was promised in early August and has not materialized ). Among the people spearheading the plan was Judith Blake, the Leeds city council leader, who told me about a list of flaws that should have been shocking, but instead felt terribly familiar.
Leeds, let’s not forget, is the UK’s third largest city. Testing and tracing there, he said, “is not working properly at all,” especially when it comes to self-isolating people. He told me there was an ongoing fog of briefings with the media about the new three-tier system and what it may or may not entail. She expects new hospitality rules to arrive next week, “but we don’t know how long it will be, two weeks, three weeks or more than that? So it’s very difficult for us to come up with a plan. “
What did it all come down to? “It’s about a lack of respect, a lack of trust and a lack of understanding of our experience,” Blake said, “which could have brought so many benefits if we had been involved in the planning from the beginning.” She seemed sad and tired: someone who was trying to do her best, but was controlled by Westminster and Whitehall, and a zombie system of government that stubbornly stayed in place, even as its flaws became terrifyingly clear.
• John Harris is a columnist for The Guardian
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