Ross Clark

Boris Johnson, according to a large Twitter mob this morning, is a reckless libertarian – ignoring the drastic but effective measures being taken against coronavirus in other countries – in the same spirit he once praised the mayor in Jaws who kept the beaches open in spite of swimmers being eaten. A large body of opinion appears to be on the side of Jeremy Hunt, who questioned the government’s strategy on Channel 4 news last night. But there is a fundamental problem with this narrative – and not just that many of the same people now praising Hunt were lambasting him several years ago as a charlatan, ignoring the advice of experts in the NHS.

Yes, of course Donald Trump’s ban on travel between the US and the Schengen zone is an over-reaction to coronavirus, which will do far more harm to the economy than it will to protect the health of Americans. But it is pretty rich for the EU to be bleating about others banning things without scientific justification.  The EU has protested bitterly about the American ban, complaining it was introduced unilaterally without consultation. Guy Verhofstadt tweets: 'Instead of a travel ban for Europeans Trump should make a decent health care system that works for Americans.' The usual anti-Trumpites have weighed in with their ha’porth of wisdom, with Simon Schama calling the travel ban 'an idiotic and purely political stunt'.

Donald Trump is in the soup again, this time for appearing to reject the World Health Organisation’s estimate for the death rate from coronavirus (Covid-19): 3.4 per cent. 'I think the 3.4 per cent is really a false number,' he said on Thursday before adding that he had a ‘hunch’ that the real death rate is less than one per cent. Twitter, needless to say, immediately went into meltdown, the most polite response was to call him ‘irresponsible’. Trump is not quite the person I would call upon for insight into matters relating to virology. He does, of course, have a reputation for shooting from the hip, yet his reasoning on this is more sound than many of his critics would admit. Indeed, the WHO itself was at pains to stress that it’s 3.

It’s a bloodbath in the markets, but by how much could the real, global economy be affected by the coronavirus outbreak? A research note by Oxford Economics seeks to answer that question by comparing it with the experience of Japan following the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. On that occasion, Japan’s industrial production slumped by 15 per cent in a single month, before taking several months to recover. The car industry was affected still more, with a 60 per cent plunge in the month following the earthquake. Interestingly, notes the think tank, the part of Japan affected by the disaster accounted for only 3-4 per cent of national industrial output, but factories elsewhere were affected by an interruption in the supply chain.

It may well be, as Tom Goodenough argued here earlier, that Boris Johnson is secretly delighted at the Court of Appeal’s ruling that is was illegal for the government to give the go-ahead to a third runway at Heathrow without taking into account their own climate policy. The Prime Minister had, after all, promised his constituents that he would lie down in front of the bulldozers to stop a third runway. He now has the cover of a court decision to shield him from the Conservative party’s pro-runway elements if the project ends up being dropped. But the Prime Minister should be extremely concerned about the wider implications of this judgement. It is yet one more example of power draining away from elected government in Parliament, towards the courts.

Open the papers this morning and you would think the government had just announced plans to slaughter the first-born. The cause of the outrage? The environment secretary has just said that the sale of coal and damp logs for burning in domestic properties is to be banned from next year. Apparently it is an attack on people who live in the countryside, and on the Tories’ new-found voters in the north of England – whom some Conservatives in the south still no doubt think keep coal in their baths. Maybe there are still a few coal-burners in the likes of Bolsover – although the business of that particular town was for many years producing Coalite, a smokeless fuel which it appears will not fall foul of the ban.

A year ago, did anyone look like they would come out of Brexit better than Leo Varadkar? Here was a leader of a small country on the fringe of the EU suddenly catapulted to its centre. He was the one pushed forward by Juncker, Barnier, Merkel and Macron, as they sought to leverage advantage from the tricky problem of the Irish border. Not only was Varadkar seen to be standing up for the Republic’s interest, but by driving a wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom, he seemed to be setting himself up as the instigator of possible Irish reunification – he was drawing the issue away from the nationalists. Last night, Varadkar resigned as Taoiseach after a humiliating general election defeat two weeks ago.

Where are the engineers? Whenever climate change comes up we hear from ecologists, activists and the odd scientist. But engineers? The very people we need to solve problems seem to be shut away in a box while school kids and dopey vegan campaigners are handed a megaphone with which to tell us the planet is going to die unless humans go back to pre-industrial poverty. This week’s floods are a prime example of our anti-engineering age. Hundreds of homes have been inundated with water, while several flood defences have failed, even though they were only recently installed. One might think the Environment Agency – the national body responsible for food defence in England – would be asking what is going wrong.

When I read that police were invoking emergency powers at an Extinction Rebellion protest in Cambridge I thought: about time, too. It meant, I presumed, that they were not going to make the same mistake as the Met Police last April, when they were too slow to stop this bunch of anarchists closing down public thoroughfares. But one should underestimate the plods at one’s peril. The ‘emergency powers’ being used by Cambridgeshire Police instead allow them to close the roads without giving any notice. Yes, they are actively facilitating the protest. They turned up in their yellow vests and closed a local road on the activists’ behalf. It will remain shut all week, affecting bus routes and requiring ambulances to make a detour.

Like the Trumpton fire brigade, Britain’s disaster planners have had precious little opportunity to show off their skills over the past few decades. Plans for a nuclear war merely gathered dust. Global pandemics failed to arrive, as did a no-deal Brexit. Just about the only crisis requiring nationwide emergency planning concerned foot and mouth disease in 2001 when six million animals were slaughtered and Labour ministers announced ‘the countryside is closed’, killing off rural businesses, yet still failed to prevent the spread of the disease from Cornwall to Northumberland.

Given what he has previously said about Brexit it would be a bit much to expect departing Bank of England governor Mark Carney to say that leaving the EU is a good thing for Britain. Nevertheless, it is still a bit of pleasant surprise to hear him in what – in Carney-speak – is presumably the next best thing. In an interview with Reuters, he has just described Brexit as a 'conceptual positive' for the UK economy.

I imagine that in recommending Philip Hammond and Ken Clarke for peerages, Boris Johnson sees himself in engaging in a Tory healing process. 'I may have kicked them out of the parliamentary party,' he is saying, 'but let bygones be bygones – I’m big enough to honour my former enemies.' And of course, unlike David Gauke and Dominic Grieve, neither had the temerity to stand against the Conservative party in the general election, so it is some kind of reward for not complaining too bitterly when punished for disloyalty. But is that really the message that Boris needs to be handing out regarding the House of Lords – underlining its role as a place where Prime Minister’s can do politics through patronage?