Coronavirus isn’t the UK’s only ‘invisible enemy’ – let’s not forget about Brexit

Had we stayed in the EU, the UK’s tottering economy would’ve stood a chance in the post-lockdown world. Along with the virus, the aftershocks of poor leadership will keep us reeling for generations

In the government’s handling of coronavirus, the UK has effectively set a model for every other foreign country to avoid.

Boris Johnson’s speech on Sunday made things ever confusing. Despite trying desperately to show some semblance of a plan for the pandemic, it ended up confirming nothing but widespread fears.

The measures have only highlighted that lockdown has not yet reduced the R-rate and that we need more time.

But the only thing exceptional about the UK right now, is the care homes death-rate crisis and how quickly it has become one of few countries that have let the virus put its territorial integrity under direct threat.

By the time Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, skewered Johnson into providing answers for the government's handling of the pandemic in the first Prime Minister's Questions, many foreign leaders had asked precisely the same question weeks before. As Starmer pointed out during that PMQs, it was being “slow into lockdown, slow on testing, slow on tracing, slow on the supply of PPE” that secured our fate. It's no wonder governments in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere understood the potential scale of disaster we’d face long before the UK.

But I'd argue that it was the 2016 Brexit referendum that revealed exactly how divided, underfunded and ideologically driven the UK really is, thanks in large part to austerity and a decade under the Conservative Party. It's just that coronavirus helped lift the curtain on the government's true nature: amateurish, inept and slow.

As things stand, the coronavirus crisis’ devastating outcome is a natural result of the disastrous handling of Brexit. This goes for the country’s unity, the NHS, social care and the economy too.

As my colleague, Sean O’Grady, pointed out in his column on Monday, Johnson is no longer a prime minister of the whole United Kingdom. While his “Stay Alert” message has fractured the should-be united, national response to Covid-19, this is not new. The kingdom has in reality, long been divided, it's just that most of us haven't accepted it yet.

Nicola Surgeon’s resistance, first to preventing Scotland from being dragged out of the EU, then again when British lives were put at risk by hesitating to ditch the “Stay at Home” message too early, is one such indicator. Sure, Johnson may have seen her simply as an anti-Brexit agitator with a wish to undermine his government’s authority. Now, though, her ability to veto the government's messaging makes it a whole different story. By using such powers, together with Belfast and Cardiff, Sturgeon is inching closer to the image of the prime minister the UK needs. Rather than Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales, it seems England is alienated, walking its own dangerous path.

In 2019, UK legislation on reforms to the NHS and social care had been shelved because Theresa May’s government was busy trying to find a way out of her Brexit quagmire, whether in chaotic negotiations with the EU or handling the mess in her own party. And throughout January and February, Johnson's government made the same mistake by not taking the WHO's coronavirus warnings seriously, instead, focusing on “getting Brexit done.”

The PM may seem to have paid for May’s missteps and the obsession with going down in history as the leader who could get the UK out of the EU. But he made two huge blunders: first as a disastrous foreign secretary, giving an equally miserable performance in May’s government, then when he allowed his government to become lost in action in the early weeks of the coronavirus outbreak. The result has been thousands of fatalities, with the very older people who enthusiastically voted for both Brexit and the Tories, sadly, likely to bear the brunt of the pandemic.

As irksome as the government's obsession with using the language of war to drive home the seriousness of coronavirus is, it's clear the other “invisible enemy” in this fight is indeed Brexit and its shambolic handling by the Tory party. We're being introduced to the repercussions of that leadership now, but the aftershocks will keep us reeling for generations.

Had we stayed in the EU, the UK’s tottering economy would’ve stood a chance in the post-lockdown world. But given the news that the vaccine may “never arrive”, as the prime minister admitted on Monday, it's imperative that the government takes this seriously. The death toll will only exceed the 32,000 we already have. In the inevitable public inquiry into the government’s strategy to deal with the pandemic, it's likely the government will be blamed – but austerity and Brexit are undoubtedly part of those failings too.

Though they'll never admit it, Brexit and coronavirus are the twin epidemics this country will need years, perhaps decades, to overcome.