The Illusion of Singular Greatness

Once again, Great Britain has be­come the focus of at­ten­tion for much of the global press and once again the world has looked on in shock. In 2016, Eu­ro­peans across the con­ti­nent could not be­lieve that de­spite warn­ings from the grand ma­jor­ity of eco­nomic ex­perts around the world – who ex­plained that sep­a­rat­ing from the Eu­ro­pean Union would cause sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the British econ­omy – a ma­jor­ity of UK vot­ers voted in favour of Brexit. There are a mul­ti­tude of rea­sons that can ex­plain the source of the sup­port for Brexit, but it is dif­fi­cult to ig­nore the sus­pi­cion that part of it comes from a nos­tal­gia for the British Em­pire and the re­lated be­lief in UK ex­cep­tion­al­ism. The Brexit cam­paign was led by a part of the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party that ar­gued that this great coun­try could pros­per out­side of the union, that it did not need its most sig­nif­i­cant trad­ing part­ner, and that it should strike its own trade deals across the globe. More­over, there were some Brex­i­teers who ar­gued that the UK should pri­ori­tise eco­nomic ties with the Com­mon­wealth of Na­tions over trade with the Eu­ro­pean Union. It be­came clear that, for some, this ide­ol­ogy was more im­por­tant than eco­nomic in­ter­ests. Many in­di­vid­u­als within the Leave cam­paign char­ac­terised the pro­nounce­ments of the grand ma­jor­ity of ex­perts and other de­trac­tors as alarmism, de­clar­ing that it was all part of the so called “Pro­ject Fear”. While the coun­try has for the mo­ment avoided the cat­a­stro­phe of a no-deal Brexit, the elec­tion of Boris John­son as Prime Min­is­ter has made Brexit in­evitable, lead­ing the United King­dom to a sit­u­a­tion that will surely harm the econ­omy.

In 2020, it seems this ide­ol­ogy has again in­flu­enced the de­ci­sion mak­ing of Brex­i­teers now in gov­ern­ment with grave re­sults. Just like four years ago, Eu­rope has looked on per­plexed as the UK has de­cided to take an­other di­rec­tion in com­bat­ing coro­n­avirus. When many coun­tries were be­gin­ning to in­tro­duce el­e­ments of a lock­down and had the ex­am­ple of Italy to show the dam­age that the virus can do, the UK gov­ern­ment de­cided to fol­low a pol­icy of pur­su­ing Herd Im­mu­nity with­out a vac­cine. This strat­egy was made up of two pil­lars: pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble within the pop­u­la­tion and, at the same time, al­low­ing the virus to in­fect at least 60% of the rest of the pop­u­la­tion. This de­ci­sion was im­me­di­ately ques­tioned by the WHO as well as the UK pub­lic health com­mu­nity. To calm a pub­lic con­cerned that the gov­ern­ment was di­verg­ing from the path taken by other coun­tries, gov­ern­ment min­is­ters as­sured every­one that they were “fol­low­ing the sci­ence”. The in­evitable im­pli­ca­tion of such a state­ment was that sci­en­tists in other coun­tries were wrong and that the sci­en­tists in Eng­land had a bet­ter ap­proach. Ad­di­tion­ally, as some have pointed out, there is no sin­gle “agreed” sci­ence and there ex­ists di­vi­sions and di­ver­sity of opin­ion within the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity. As a re­sult, it is pol­i­tics that ul­ti­mately chooses which sci­ence to fol­low and it is no­table that Do­minic Cum­mings, trusted ad­viser to Boris John­son, was at­tend­ing meet­ings of the Sci­en­tific Ad­vi­sory Group for Emer­gen­cies (SAGE). It is also no­table that when the mem­bers of SAGE were re­vealed, many asked why in­de­pen­dent ex­perts in pub­lic health were not pre­sent or con­sulted. The gov­ern­ment pur­sued this Herd Im­mu­nity pol­icy with­out con­sid­er­ing that the Na­tional Health Ser­vice (NHS) did not have the re­sources to prop­erly man­age the wave of cases after years of bud­get cuts and aus­ter­ity. Care homes did not have enough Per­sonal Pro­tec­tive Equip­ment ei­ther, some­thing that would seem es­sen­tial for a strat­egy that had, at its core, the goal of pro­tect­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble. Later, when a study led by a promi­nent ex­pert in epi­demi­ol­ogy from Im­pe­r­ial Col­lege Lon­don was re­leased sug­gest­ing that 510,000 peo­ple could lose their lives fol­low­ing this strat­egy, John­son re­versed his pol­icy on March 16. But fol­low­ing his anti-au­thor­i­tar­ian in­stinct, he chose to fol­low a strat­egy of vol­un­tary con­fine­ment. A new mes­sage in­sin­u­ated from this strat­egy was that other coun­tries needed strict rules to achieve com­pli­ance, but the British pub­lic did not. When mo­bile track­ing data showed there was not enough ad­her­ence to the guide­lines, the gov­ern­ment once again re­versed its pol­icy. On March 23, John­son an­nounced a strict lock­down that would be en­forced by the po­lice to guar­an­tee com­pli­ance. Stud­ies now show that the gov­ern­ment lost cru­cial time dur­ing these early stages that could have pre­vented some loss of life. While it may have avoided the cat­a­stro­phe of the death of a sit­ting Prime Min­is­ter, the United King­dom is now, trag­i­cally, the coun­try in Eu­rope with the high­est Covid-19 death toll.

With this ex­pe­ri­ence in mind, one might ask whether the struc­tures main­tain­ing the be­lief in British ex­cep­tion­al­ism might be start­ing to crum­ble. One might also ask whether the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment will start to see the ben­e­fit in co­op­er­at­ing with its neigh­bours, even if this some­times means fol­low­ing oth­ers. One may also won­der whether the gov­ern­ment will now be averse to ex­plor­ing risky po­lit­i­cal choices with­out the global con­sen­sus of ex­pert opin­ion. Con­sid­er­ing the gov­ern­ment is not will­ing to ex­tend the ne­go­ti­a­tion pe­riod with the EU on Brexit, and that there are re­ports that the gov­ern­ment is prepar­ing for a no-deal sce­nario, it seems the ide­ol­ogy of ex­cep­tion­al­ism will con­tinue to lead the UK into fur­ther blun­ders in the fu­ture.