It wasn’t supposed to be like this. After winning the largest majority for any political party since 2001 Boris Johnson was, by now, supposed to be well on his way to redefining Brexit Britain.
In some alternate reality we are all sat on Twitter debating the early ingredients of ‘Johnson-ism’: reform the civil service; ‘level-up’ the regions; launch a new immigration policy; finish phase two of the Brexit negotiations; deliver a bold new budget by Rishi Sunak, the 39-year-old Chancellor who was in the fast-lane to becoming Britain’s first non-white prime minister.
Pretty much all of that has been thrown out of the window. The sudden and shocking outbreak of coronavirus has rightly focused our minds on the fragility of human life. But it also reminds us of the fragility of politics; how entire governments can be suddenly and easily knocked off course by events that are out of their control. The historian A.J.P. Taylor once said that politicians cannot create the current of events — they can only float along and try to steer. But Taylor was talking about the contours of European history not a sudden, global epidemic. The coronavirus looks less like a current than an overwhelming tsunami.
And it is a crisis that will define Johnson’s premiership.
Some Prime Ministers, despite what they might have hoped, are only ever remembered for one thing. Anthony Eden and Suez. Tony Blair and Iraq. David Cameron and Brexit. Theresa May and the same thing.
Like his immediate predecessors, Johnson had also been destined for the Brexit trap before he somehow managed to escape by landing his party a large majority and himself a second chance. But now that door has closed as quickly as it opened. The coronavirus has replaced Brexit as the one thing that will determine how Johnson is remembered.
And what impact is the crisis having? Spend time on social media and you might conclude that it is demolishing our new Prime Minister. Ever since the crisis erupted Johnson and his government have been widely criticised for what their critics argue has been a slow and incompetent response. “Johnson says this is war”, reads one column in the Guardian. “But his response to Covid-19 is laughably inadequate”. Others claim that the Prime Minister is “struggling to inspire trust“.
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