It’s understandable that, in a crisis, politicians reach for wartime metaphors – but they don’t always fit. There was the ‘war on terror’. Now we have politicians talking about the need to vanquish Covid-19. This is about more than language. There’s a big difference between a Covid-19 eradication strategy and one that seeks to find a way to live with this virus, in the way we learned to live with Swine Flu (or, as it’s now called, flu.)
The Prime Minister is leading by example. Addressing a committee of conservative MPs on Thursday, he said: ‘We have to make sure that we defeat the disease by the means we have set out.’ Later he said: ‘We must, must defeat this disease.’
And last week, the Leader of the Opposition, Sir Keir Starmer, told the PM that, among other things, he should ‘Get on with defeating this virus.’
Are they aiming for elimination? If so, it’s a new strategy – and a worrying sign of mission creep.
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