Don’t expect Johnson to be the same UK PM

In his absence, Boris Johnson’s British government has mainly followed the lockdown strategy that was determined before the prime minister was infected with Covid-19. Many are hoping that he will soon return to work and change course; that he’ll celebrate signs of a flattening infection curve and reopen Britain for business. It’s unlikely to work out that way.
It’s true that you almost expect Johnson to bound up to the cameras and change the narrative. His modus operandi throughout his career has been Tiggerish enthusiasm. The politician who banished the “gloomsters and doomsters” on Brexit and championed the three-word campaign slogan (“Take Back Control” and “Get Brexit Done”) might well have been expected, before his illness struck, to make “Lift the Lockdown” his mantra.
Even if Johnson looks and sounds much the same when he returns to full-time work, the experience of serious illness and a forced leave of absence as thousands died must have affected his sense of mission.
Johnson had often used the country’s National Health Service as a prop when building his case for Brexit and his election campaign (leaving Europe, he argued speciously, would free money to spend on healthcare). Will he not now do more to support an underfunded, overstretched and ill-equipped
service that he credits with saving his life?
There will certainly be no immediate rush to relax the lockdown strictures. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, who has deputised for Johnson, has already extended the measures by another three weeks. Still, as other nations begin to loosen controls, the clamor will grow louder in Britain too.
Last week Raab announced five tests that would determine the timing for a reopening of the UK. The first three are fairly straightforward: The government must be confident that the NHS can provide sufficient care across the country; there must be a sustained fall in the daily death rate; and there needs to be evidence that the infection rate is decreasing.
The fourth test is more vague. The UK is increasing testing, finally, but it’s a long way from the kind of regimes put in place in east Asian countries that quickly suppressed the spread of the virus, including contact tracing. Germany is well ahead on this too. PPE shortages, one of the unnecessary tragedies of this outbreak, persist, as the British Medical Association and doctors repeatedly note.
And yet Raab’s fourth target doesn’t specify what levels of testing and PPE need to be delivered.
Even if the government fixes these problems, the fifth test is that there can be no risk of a second peak in infections from relaxing the lockdown. While Johnson is a political gambler who favors the bold stroke, he surely wouldn’t open the sluice gates and let a new wave of infections wash away the stability built through social distancing and curtailed activity.
—Bloomberg