Will the Brits Ever Trust Boris Johnson Again?
Britain has to finally get its coronavirus response right before it can count on a speedy economic recovery.
Boris Johnson hit the mall on Monday.
Photographer: John Nguyen/WPA Pool via Getty Images
Boris Johnson clearly wants to draw a line under the fiascoes of Britain’s handling of the pandemic and return to the “boosterism” for which he is best known. And as is often the case, his instinct is right. Doing so will be crucial to putting the economy firmly on a path to recovery.
The U.K. downgraded its coronavirus alert level on Friday, signaling that more lockdown restrictions can be lifted, but Johnson won’t be able to turn the page just like that. More than half the British population thinks the government is handling the crisis poorly or fairly poorly, according to a Kantar survey published this week. A string of errors, U-turns, corrections and confusions in the government’s virus response have dented the almost unassailable levels of public confidence that followed Johnson’s election victory in December.
Most people understand that the coronavirus is a once in a century shock that no government was fully prepared for. But rather than learn from how other countries had responded to Covid-19 as it spread from Wuhan in China, Britain turned into an epicenter for the outbreak, becoming the worst-hit country in Europe and one of the worst globally, by defiantly striking a path of its own.