The First Cut is the Deepest: Cabinet, Covid and a 'Zombie' Brexit

The UK heads into 2021 with one of the highest Covid-19 death tolls in the world and one of the deepest recessions of all major countries, yet the government has chosen to forge ahead with a weak trade deal with the EU and to defend the seemingly indefensible conduct of its ministers and aides.

Here’s why such actions might actually help this government’s chance of re-election and why the biggest danger to the Conservative Party is – yet again - from the inside.

Politically it makes sense to take radical and unpopular actions early into an election cycle. It gives you time to reap the rewards of the measures that have been implemented and it allows distance between any initial negative effects or bad publicity by giving the government time to steady the ship.

With a safe 80 seat parliamentary majority and up to four years until the next General Election there are clear political advantages from melting the costs of a weak deal with the EU into that of the Covid-19 crisis.

• Firstly, with the deal estimated to shave between 2 and 4% off GDP, the public may fail to differentiate between the negative – particularly economic - effects of Brexit and those of the pandemic.

• Secondly, restraints on civil liberties which are ostensibly intended to curb the spread of the virus will reduce the likelihood of civil disobedience or large-scale protests such as those opposing the Iraq War or Brexit. Government has already widened the powers available to control or ban protests and the Home Secretary Priti Patel is planning to introduce a new law which could curb the rights of protesters.
• Thirdly it changes the perception of government and the standards it upholds. Having a series of big controversies early on will radically change expectations of the government and its ministers. This may be preferable to a drip-feed of scandals which slowly undermine public opinion nearer the election. An example is that we now have different, lowered expectations of how government handles itself in areas such as procurement or how it reacts to potential breaches of the ministerial code.

Time keeps on slipping...

But how much can a party presiding over (at least) one national crisis achieve in turning things around in a relatively short period of time?

Quite a lot, if you consider the austerity programme set out under former Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne after the ‘Credit Crunch’ recession. In June 2010 Cameron described the economic situation as he came to power as "even worse than we thought" and warned of "difficult decisions" to be made over spending cuts. But by the beginning of 2015 he was able to at least appear credible in claiming that his government's brutal austerity programme had put the country back on its feet and had succeeded in halving the budget deficit, although as a percentage of GDP rather than in cash terms.

By the time the next election came around the party was promoting its success in turning the country around and Cameron was on his way to celebrating a large majority victory.

Boosted by an election pledge to hold a referendum on EU membership, the Conservatives had convinced at least some of the electorate that taking the pain was worthwhile and that they could be trusted to manage the country. The difference with current events is that the economic crash hit on Gordon Brown’s watch so the Cameron’s Conservatives were the right side of the fence having been voted in partly to fix the mess.

Sometimes a party will pay a high cost for its own mistakes. The Liberal Democrats built their 2010 election campaign around a pledge to abolish tuition fees. After they helped form a coalition government which tripled tuition fees, the student vote collapsed and reduced the Lib Dems from 57 seats to 8 in the 2015 election, costing Nick Clegg his leadership of the party.

But the Liberal Democrats were the meat in a political sandwich, more liberal and progressive than the Conservatives and more small state and libertarian than Labour. Without a large core of loyal voters, a party on the crest of a wave was always likely to be subsumed by others as problems emerged.

Doggedly pursuing an unpopular policy – particularly one that hits voters in their wallets – can have its downsides even for the Conservatives, so perhaps there is one parallel that might come in useful, assuming that voters apportion some of the blame for recent fiascos onto the government.

The Community Charge was a new Conservative Policy referenced in their 1987 Election Manifesto which helped pave the way for another comfortable parliamentary majority for the party, despite only having around 42 percent of the vote. The charge - more commonly known as the ‘Poll Tax’ - soon became hugely unpopular and widespread protests in 1990 led to the government facing heavy pressure to change course. This public pressure paved the way for a new Conservative leadership, led by John Major who took over from Margaret Thatcher and soon abolished her flagship policy. The affair showed that the Conservatives could successfully regroup to win an election after such turmoil, but at considerable cost.

So, distant as it may seem, it’s not implausible to think that politics may move toward ‘business as usual’ well before the next election takes place.

Think back to David Cameron’s increased majority and there may even still be time for a revival in the future if a successful vaccination programme is rolled out and the country enjoys any sort of recovery – however gradual - from the twin threats of a rolling pandemic and a weak deal with the EU. If the tide fails to turn and Mr Johnson’s popularity is badly affected, there’s no guarantee that he will remain on the scene. The Conservative Party has shown that they can be ruthlessly pragmatic when changing leaders, which is why rumours of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak being lined up as a replacement need to be taken seriously.

Meet the new boss?

In Boris Johnson, no recent Prime Minister has intentionally blurred the lines between political, professional and personal so much in their governing of the country. No recent Prime Minister has exploited his personality attributes so much or acted at the behest of his flaws.

Johnson’s character has been targeted during the pandemic, garnering criticism even within the right-wing press for being unfocussed, flippant and unable to show true leadership. Attacking Johnson’s character has been fertile ground for Labour’s recent campaigning yet he retains some good will within the party membership.

Despite the weekly wish-fulfilment PR from Conservative insiders that the Prime Minister has ‘rediscovered his mojo’, I suspect that Boris is too far down the road to revive the metropolitan ‘one-nation Tory’ character that helped him to win two terms as Mayor of London. People outside of London have begun to see a rather unwelcome side to the Prime Minister since the pandemic began and his strategy of dangling wish-fulfilment fantasies over the general public has floundered, not least when misguidedly proclaiming in March that the pandemic would be over in 12 weeks and then saying in July that it would be over by Christmas.

If a replacement was to be considered, Sunak would be the palatable face of what would still ostensibly still be a ‘Vote Leave’ government – remember that the previous Chancellor walked out after a bust-up with Dominic Cummings over a demand for him to sack his advisers. Opposition parties keen to close the book on Brexit negotiations should be aware of the bait-and-switch as, depending on the timing, Sunak could even be set up as a Brexit ‘reformer’, enabling the less electable Michael Gove and the network he and Cummings helped set up to continue behind an articulate and perhaps less divisive voice.

It is also likely that the Conservatives will set up Brexit as a key issue for yet another General Election, with a review of arrangements with the EU due shortly after the next scheduled vote in 2024. Johnson is already claiming that Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer wants a mandate at the next election to ‘rewrite’ the deal, despite Starmer’s earlier claim that renegotiation would not be central to his party’s manifesto.

Interestingly, Sunak seems to be tasked with delivering mostly positive stories to the public and businesses – the Eat Out to Help Out Scheme and the Furlough Scheme funding - to the point at which Labour have attempted to get ahead of the game by lampooning Sunak’s ‘handwritten’ messaging style and proposing a furlough extension which the government eventually agreed to implement.

Despite recent controversy over his lockdown scepticism, it's not difficult to imagine Sunak in place. A few media-friendly cabinet changes could be made to bring some of the new stock of MPs. Johnson could disappear off the map, book deal in hand and free to flit from one international location to another, existing in a Berlusconi-styled political afterlife.

Change of a sort is already afoot. Government has made efforts to correct its messaging and rebrand its PR machine, evident in the resignation of the abrasive Downing Street Director of Communications Lee Cain. The unpopular Dominic Cummings has also apparently left, although despite his deliberately ostentatious departure, it is unclear on whose terms he left, or which projects he continues to work on. Allegra Stratton has come in as Downing Street Press Secretary and ex-Treasury official and banker Dan Rosenfield has been appointed as Chief of Staff. These appointments suggest that government wants to be seen to adopt a more consensual and less tribal approach to both the media and civil service administration. Sure enough, Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford has already linked further UK cooperation on the pandemic response to the absence of Cummings.

So, with light at the end of the tunnel in the shape of the vaccines, the difficult decisions made early and enough time to rebrand the party, surely it’s valid to assume that the Conservatives won’t be as gaffe-prone for the next few years.

Or is it?

There may be trouble ahead…

Boris Johnson’s two terms as mayor of London were marked by a tendency to delegate. From an objective viewpoint, this delegation was a qualified success in achieving its aims, allowing Johnson to maintain his position as a figurehead while the policy work continued apace behind. Although hindsight has judged some of Johnson’s mayoral decisions poorly – the unbuilt garden bridge and attempted legal cover up over the costly London Stadium deal for example – there is little argument that he managed to get away with doing most of what he wanted to do and enjoy considerable popularity.

Unfortunately, despite taking on the critical role of leading the country, the PM faces a self-inflicted lack of operational talent within his party.

"What's being done in China, what's being done in South Korea, and what's being done in Denmark - where they've just closed the schools - is completely different to what is being done in Britain,"

~ Rory Stewart, former Secretary of State for International Development, speaking in March 2020.

When the pandemic hit in March, former Conservative leadership hopefuls Jeremy Hunt and Rory Stewart – both former Ministers with Health policy experience – were among those making the right call on the need for stricter measures to prevent Covid-19. You would have thought that such insight would be been a boost to the UK’s pandemic response. Unfortunately not.

Stewart had earlier resigned from the party and Hunt had been side-lined as the Prime Minister stocked his cabinet with loyalists. The warnings went unheeded while Johnson and his Health Secretary Matt Hancock dithered over which measures to take at a cost of thousands of lives. Johnson would later repeat this error when he belatedly decreed a second lockdown.

Johnson’s determination to ‘throw the sailors overboard’ went deeper than the loss of those two leadership rivals. A spate of Brexit-related sackings – ostensibly for failing to support an agreement that the government itself later looked to renege on – meant that the party lost many former Cabinet members including two former Chancellors. The dismissal of a number of aides and civil servants followed, helping weaken the central machinery of government. This 'hollowing out' was in order to help Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove centralise power as the guitar and rhythm section behind Johnson’s live-band karaoke Churchill impression.

There have been political upsides to the plans to centralise and tribalise government. Johnson, Cummings and Gove have been able to push out some radical policies – such as the Internal Market Bill and the sweeping cuts to Foreign Aid - with very little pushback from within.

But nowhere has the damage been more apparent than within the Cabinet itself.

“One quick way of me assessing people is whether I would trust them with a platoon of 36 soldiers if they had to do an attack.”

~ Former British Army officer and United Nations commander Bob Stewart MP on why he was supporting Boris Johnson’s leadership bid, June 2019.

Any thoughts that this obsequiousness towards Johnson had reached its nadir with Bob Stewart’s comments would be dispelled when the PM’s first Cabinet was announced. Members were appointed not on operational merit but in order to guarantee their loyalty to the leadership.

These included Priti Patel, who was forced to quit Theresa May's Cabinet after having a series of unofficial meetings with the Israeli government and Gavin Williamson who was earlier sacked over a leak of National Security Information.

At worst the cabinet members look far out of their depth, especially in the cases of Liz Truss – who is still popular within the party - and Williamson, who was partly responsible for this Summer's A-levels and GCSE exams fiasco. Perhaps only Rishi Sunak and Grant Shapps have made any type of positive impression or shown any crossover appeal.

"Time to form a square around the Prittster"

~ Boris Johnson's WhatsApp message to Conservative MPs

Repaying the loyalty of his team continues to undermine both Johnson’s credibility and the government's messaging.

He backed Robert Jenrick in January over his unlawful approval of a development project in order to save a donor money.

He backed Dominic Cummings after his trip to Barnard Castle.

Most recently he backed Priti Patel, who effectively breached the ministerial code by bullying staff, just a few years after allegedly bullying a civil servant to the point of attempted suicide before Johnson revived her career.

And despite the surplus of Conservative MPs there may well be a paucity of talent to call on in the coming years in the event of any PR-friendly reshuffles. With more objective voices removed earlier and many new MPs not subject to any particularly high level of screening aside from ensuring their Euroscepticism, the talent pool looks smaller than ever.

From despair to where?

If the government continues on its current path, its popularity will depend on how well it can distance itself from the negative financial and social impact of its policies and whether it can exploit any upturn in fortunes, however small. Johnson’s recent remarks suggest he is keen to continue with the misdirection that has served his allies within the party so well, in particular by politicising the renegotiation of Britain’s treaty with the EU ahead of a scheduled election. I'm sure I'm not alone in being disheartened by the prospect of a 2024 election campaign being driven by a 'Zombie Brexit'.

But is that the full story? A good way of ascertaining how well government thinks it is doing is to look at its campaigning messages and how they relate to achievements. Recent Conservative online communications have focussed on positive stories such as the new vaccine roll-out and announcements on NHS and police recruitment, but in an increasingly lukewarm press, the weapon of choice for channelling resentment away has been to instigate what is commonly described as a ‘culture war’. This consists of bonding with voters by playing on perceived grievances and identifying the enemies that have ‘caused’ the grief, a successful strategy and integral to retaining a number of voters who made a heavy emotional investment in Britain leaving the EU.

You can, of course, find out more about that right here…

Matt Mahony