Wednesday 18 March 2020

Exeunt Buffoon Johnson...


...preferably pursued by a bear.

Mr Johnson is, of course, no buffoon, but a very shrewd man.  He has calculated, sadly correctly, that acting as a P G Wodehouse jackass- type will appeal to the electorate and get him where he wants to be.  So he won the London mayoralty twice in spite of making a mess of the job, and in spite of being being a failure as the buffooning foreign secretary, went to to become prime minister.

Now he realises that the upper-class-twit persona is not appropriate for the coronavirus pandemic, so the buffoon veneer is cast off and more serious facade adopted.

With astonishing chutzpah (possible something you learn at Eton,) he now appears in press conferences  flanked by the Chief Medical Officer  and the Chief Scientific Officer.  Mantras about "following the science" and "expert opinion" are repeated ad nauseam by ministers now permitted to appear on the Today Programme. The Britain that had "had enough of experts" is now airbrushed out of our history.  

How differenly our membership of the EU would have been resolved if Brexiteer Johnson had appeared flanked by the Governor of the Bank of England and the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury.

It is clear that Johnson is carefully covering  his back.  If the effects of the coronavirus are more devastating in the UK than in comparable countries than he can pass the blame onto the experts.

He may well have to do this, because the initial advice appears to have been mistaken.

In an analogy with "market rules OK" economics, the original aproach seems to have been to let the disease run its course.  A minority of vulnerable people, the elderly and those with underlying conditions, would catch it and die, but the overwhelming majority, inducing almost all children, would suffer only mild symptoms, recover, and the population as a whole would achieve "herd immunity."  

Modelling by scientists at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine** (see below for correction) showed that this approach, even if herd immunity could  be achieved in this way rather than through the normal vaccination process, would lead to a scale of sickness and death which  would be politically unacceptable and overwhelm the NHS.  

As one of the vulnerable (aged 82) who would have been a prime candidate for sacrifice for the common good in this approach, I'm relieved that we have changed tack, even if it does result in my self-isolation for several weeks.

Just as the government expects us to forget its former contempt for experts, we are also expected to have collective amnesia on the effects of 10 years of Tory austerity, not just on our NHS but also on the civil service, local government and other public services.  

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, has located not so much a magic money tree or even an orchard, but a veritable magic money plantation.  £350bn is to be sprayed into the economy to avoid the worst economic effects of the virus.  

Well, that's all to the good; in fact a tenth of that in 2010 would have avoided a lot of misery. 

But even if the economy is propped up by this infusion (and, as is often the case, simply expanding the money supply does not necessarily get the money into the right places) all the money in the world cannot suddenly conjure up extra doctors and nurses, extra hospital beds,more ICU equipment,  more local government health officers, more civil servants, more care homes and qualified carers.  

As a slogan "Whatever it takes," is a worthy successor to "our long- term economic plan," "strong and stable" and "get Brexit done" - an effective piece of PR with which to deceive the public, but of little practical value.

What we need is a sprit of self-sacrifice  and discipline.  Neither  Johnson nor his cabinet are effective role-models for these virtues.

** Sorry,I misremembered.  The research was not from the LSHTM but , according to an article in today's "Guardian"  by Dr Richard Hatton, editor of "The Lancet," by researchers at Imperial College.  The reasoning did not require higher mathematics.  The  laissez faire approach  assumed that 60% of the UK's 6.6m population  would get the disease.  That's just just short of 40m people.  If 1% of them die (the going rate) that's around 400 000 people.  

In China, where the spread of the virus appeasers to have been slowed if not halted , the total number of deaths so far is 3 245. 

Of course there's still some way to go, but thank goodness for the change of tack.

7 comments:

  1. The Britain that had "had enough of experts" is now airbrushed out of our history.

    When Michael Gove said that he meant economists and other such haruspices, not actual experts in actual sciences.

    I'm actually quite glad that Boris seems to realise that his rôle in this is to be the public face of statements and leave all the actual decisions to the experts. Not all countries' leaders are being so sensible (Trump, Macron) and from Boris's previous behaviour you might have expected him to use the crisis as an excuse to grandstand, and make popular but mistaken decisions. He certainly hasn't done that; while his decisions may have been mistaken (we won't really know that until this is over) they certainly weren't done for popularity.

    As one of the vulnerable (aged 82) who would have been a prime candidate for sacrifice for the common good in this approach

    The original strategy, as I understand it, was to allow the disease to run its course while protecting the vulnerable, so no one was going to be sacrificed. Indeed the whole change of tack seems to have been because it was discovered that the severity of the disease had been underestimated and therefore pursuing it would have involved sacrifices.

    Well, that's all to the good; in fact a tenth of that in 2010 would have avoided a lot of misery.

    Of course the public finances are in a very different shape than they were in 2010, which makes a different to what we are able to do. I wonder what happened between then and now to make the difference?

    What we need is a spirit of self-sacrifice and discipline. Neither Johnson nor his cabinet are effective role-models for these virtues.

    So we must do as they say, not as they do (though actually I don't know enough about the members of the cabinet other than Boris to know that you're being fair there. For all I know Sunak might be a very disciplined person. He certainly sometimes looks a lot more Prime Ministerial than Boris. A bit young now, but in the future…).

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    1. Yes, we economists are familiar with the jibe that we're not proper scientists.What we do is adopt scientific method rather than hunches. We try to analyse the data impartially, be objective , try to identify cause and effect, and,in a famous phrase "when the facts change, change our opinions." It is interesting that the Remainers' predictions about the results of Brexit have been far more accurate the hopeful prophecies of the leavers. The main error the Remainers made was to allow talk of a "cliff edge" rather than a "slow puncture."

      As for your insinuation that the economy has somehow improved over the last ten years,it depends what you measure. True current government borrowing is (or was) down, but in 2010 the Debt:GDP ratio was 62.9%, and the latest figure shows 80.8%. See the OBR figures at
      https://tradingeconomics.com/united-kingdom/government-debt-to-gdp

      In other words, "expansionary fiscal contraction" has been a crashing failure, and has crashed a lot of our social and cultural structure with it for no long-term benefit

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    2. What we do is adopt scientific method rather than hunches. We try to analyse the data impartially, be objective , try to identify cause and effect, and,in a famous phrase "when the facts change, change our opinions."

      And you still get it right about as often as checking out the chicken entrails.

      Economists are great at analysing the past and coming up with theories as to why things went the way they did. But real science makes testable predictions about the future.

      As for your insinuation that the economy has somehow improved over the last ten years,it depends what you measure

      The deficit, obviously. What matters isn't the level of debt or its ratio to GDP, what matters is whether you're increasing or decreasing borrowing year-on-year, and by how much.

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  2. P.S. 'Exeunt' is plural. If you just mean Boris, or his 'buffoon' persona, leaves the stage, then it's the singular 'exit'.

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    1. Thanks. I didn't realise that. As I'm sure you know, it's allegedly one of Shakespeare's few stage directions but I'm not sure in which play. Do you know?

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    2. It's in The Winter's Tale and it's 'exit' as it's just Antigonus (I had to look up the name).

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  3. Thanks, I'll try to find that bit of the play and see it in context. For example, does the action take place in "bear country," has one escaped from a zoo, or is Shakespeare just being facetious, as I am?

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