The next few months will make or break the Johnson government

Editorial: Lessons from what went wrong in the spring have not been learnt

The PM’s approval ratings have been steadily sliding (Getty)

Even the most loyal of government supporters would have to concede that the great escape from lockdown isn’t going as well as hoped. Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester and hitherto mostly supportive of ministers’ plans in his city, has complained about the current confused messaging and failings in the test and trace regime that are actually “hampering” efforts to bring the coronavirus under control.

More and more local public health officers are considering going it alone. Millions of items of personal protective equipment have been found useless for frontline doctors and nurses. The travel quarantine rules are ill-conceived; the public less willing to comply with the guidance on holidays and social distancing. Lessons from what went wrong in the spring have not been learnt.

No surprise, therefore, that cases are spiking. The roll call of local lockdowns (partial or complete) is growing almost by the day. Ministers seem to be losing their game of whack-a-mole. Aberdeen and, soon, Preston, are joining Leicester, Luton, Blackburn with Darwen, Greater Manchester, East Lancashire, Bradford and other parts of Yorkshire. That, in turn, reflects the general pattern of the gently rising number of new covid cases, especially in England.

When the relaxation of lockdown in England started only six weeks ago, the level of infection in the community was in any case still relatively high compared to other countries (albeit far below the earlier peaks), and the rate of transmission in places uncomfortably close to an R rate of 1 – and thus with little scope for taking a risk. It remains the case that England has the worst record for excess deaths in Europe during the pandemic, and looks well placed to defend that unenviable record as we head towards winter and the inevitable second wave of cases.

Yet risks were taken, especially the reliance of a still patchy and flawed test and trace system. The saga of the “ramped up” targets successively set then missed and then abandoned is a depressingly familiar one. So is the absence of the “world-beating” app we were promised. Now local authorities are having to take matters into their own hands, for fear of lockdowns wrecking local economies.

It is worth stressing that all of these unwelcome developments are happening when the weather is usually warm and sunny, with people drinking in pub gardens and eating al fresco. As temperatures drop people will inevitably congregate indoors more often, and thus will be more prone to infection and spreading infections.

The test and trace system, for all its flaws, is the key to saving lives as Britain reopens the economy. It has to work, nationally or locally. According to Mr Burnham, “we’ve got to decide – and decide very quickly – where we are going with this system before we get into the depths of a difficult winter without a vaccine”.

If Westminster and devolved administration ministers press on with plans to open schools soon – only a few days away in Scotland – they may be risking many lives. While it is well observed that children and young people suffer much less from Covid-19, they can still carry the disease.

It is still unclear how rapidly the transmission of the virus takes place, from child to child to adult and thus from household to household. The dangers though are obvious, and with the R rate near to 1 and probably above 1 in some places, the dangers of many more local outbreaks are clear. With a weak and slow test and trace regime, such outbreaks will not stay local for long. And as they grow, what incentives will there be for people to self-isolate if the furlough scheme has been wound up?

The prime minister and his government have received the benefit of the doubt, so far as the opinion polls go. Boris Johnson’s approval ratings have been steadily sliding, however, and with that the Conservatives’ lead over Labour has eroded. The next few months will make or break the Johnson government. It will be confronted with coronavirus, seasonal flu, a continuing sharp recession, no-deal Brexit and, more speculatively, floods. The track record of this underpowered and arrogant administration suggests it won’t rise to the challenges.