Johnson finally announced the serious lock down that people have been demanding. MI6 Rogue was exactly right, as I posted yesterday. Lock down took immediate effect from 8:30 last night. Virtually everything will close. Everybody must stay at home except to shop for food or medicines or to take one period of exercise a day. You can travel to work if it's absolutely necessary and your work can't be done from home. Assemblies of more than two people outside the home are banned. It is a unique moment in our history. Not even in wartime have such Draconian measures been implemented.
Johnson cut a lonely figure and looked more shocked than anyone. He was wide eyed like a rabbit caught in the headlights as he read from an auto cue.
It has all the hallmarks of a last minute panic. The chairman of the Metropolitan Police complained immediately after Johnson had spoken that officers haven't been briefed on how to enforce the measures. On Sunday he seemed surprised when a journalist asked about bringing in the police. Now they are to have powers but not told how to use them. Rather than being part of an escalating process it looks like the PM is making it up as he goes along.
He has wasted seven weeks including taking a break at Chequers and failing to chair a COBRA meeting for about five weeks. It's only now that the full horror is starting to materialise that he decides to act.
He has wasted seven weeks including taking a break at Chequers and failing to chair a COBRA meeting for about five weeks. It's only now that the full horror is starting to materialise that he decides to act.
Yesterday, The Times had an editorial suggesting Johnson looked less like his hero Churchill and more like Neville Chamberlain. If so, last night was his 3rd of September moment where he told a fearful nation that the covid-19 had not given an undertaking to stop infecting people "and therefore we are at war" with the virus.
This is really serious. One can only imagine what the forecast numbers were that prompted the move. As of 9:00 am yesterday morning 6,650 positive coronavirus cases have been detected and 335 have died. You can see the official figures HERE.
A report in the FT (no£) yesterday about an academic paper which calculated the government's strategy would lead to between 35 and 70,000 'excess deaths' probably had something to do with last night's broadcast. The report refers to the excess deaths over and above what is expected in an ordinary year and is way beyond the 20,000 which the government is trying to limit it to.
It comes as Sky News noted the government has spent absolutely nothing on social media advertising to alert the population to what action they should be taking. Contrast this to the amounts spent during the election campaign to promote the Conservative party. But crikey, what's a global pandemic when stacked up against Johnson's ego and ambition?
The economy
Last night's move may be absolutely necessary, even if it's very late in the day, but it will take a wrecking ball to a British economy already on its knees, as businesses were closing down anyway through lack of customers.
It's obvious that all western governments are trying to balance the safety and well being of its citizens against protecting the economy. Every nation will experience a huge increase in borrowing and serious damage to its productive capacity after the pandemic is brought under control. That is a given.
But our problem is Brexit.
Alone among nations, Britain is negotiating a massive change to the trading relationship it has with its largest market against a ticking clock. A change that every serious economist thinks will adversely affect our economy and our ability to manage our growing debt pile. And a clock that we have said will not be stopped. This matters, as the financial markets show.
The pound took another battering from both the dollar and the euro yesterday. Looking at a 5 year span, sterling is trading lower now than after the 2016 referendum. Last night it closed at $1.1537, having dipped into $1.14 territory during the day:-
Against the euro, sterling ended the day at €1.0764, again reaching levels we never saw even in 2016:-
Brexit at the end of the year was impossible before coronavirus anyway but it will take years to rebuild the economy and surely means a long extension to the transition period. Angel Gurría, OECD Secretary General, said the shock to the global economy was already bigger than the financial crisis.
He told the BBC it was "wishful thinking" to believe that countries would bounce back quickly.
Whatever plans the government had for levelling up, more infrastructure and healing the north-south divide must be put on hold. Another ten years of austerity beckons. As for Brexit, any government contemplating erecting barriers to trade with our biggest marker and largest supplier over the next few years would surely be insane.
