Member-only story
The problem with English Common Sense in the age of Covid.
A while back — pandemic-time is amorphous, it could have been weeks or months ago — Michael Gove announced that the government would rely on the common sense of the British people when it came to mask wearing and social distancing.
My initial thought was that this was the same people who’d elected him and his friends into government, and had voted for Brexit, both things that are demonstrably not sensible, so this wasn’t a great idea.
England’s dismal performance during the pandemic has shown two things about this country. Firstly, we have become too used to incompetence, and secondly our government is putting ideology ahead of informed policy-making.
It is not a party-political point, more one about populism. The years of Corbyn, May, and Johnson has been a political period that put populism ahead of competence. People, like Chris Grayling and Liam Fox, were allowed to remain in senior positions because they were loyal, despite incompetence and failures that would have seen them fired from a junior manager’s position in any normal business. Politics under Theresa May was about balancing a cabinet between Leave and Remain, it was about clinging onto power. So cabinet jobs were more about complex Westminster chess moves than competence and ability.
