One battle Johnson is clearly winning in UK

As recently as a few weeks ago, it seemed as though UK politics could not possibly talk about anything besides Brexit, even after the country’s formal departure from the EU. Business as usual was expected to return at some unspecified point in the future.
As elsewhere, the coronavirus has turned British politics on its head. Unlike Brexit, which continues to divide opinion fairly evenly, the coronavirus crisis has prompted an outbreak of recently unfamiliar unity. Number Cruncher polling (excusive to Bloomberg) finds personal ratings for Boris Johnson — himself now diagnosed with coronavirus — that have not been seen for a British Prime Minister since the early days of Tony Blair’s premiership in 1997.
Fully 72% of eligible voters are satisfied with Johnson’s performance as Prime Minister, with 25% dissatisfied. Ninety-one per cent of those currently supporting the Conservatives count themselves as satisfied, along with about half of Labour voters and those voting for other parties and a large majority of undecided voters. Johnson’s government gets similar approval ratings, both overall (73% to 24%) and on its handling of the Coronavirus outbreak (72% to 25%).
The 1,010 interviews were conducted, following Johnson’s televised address last week, but completed before Johnson himself revealed that he had tested positive for the virus. There is some evidence in our data to suggest that these figures were higher in the
immediate aftermath of the pre-recorded broadcast, which was watched by around half of the adult population.
The strongest numbers of all are for the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak (77% satisfaction). Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, whose successor will be named on April 4, remains in negative territory (with 54% dissatisfied).
While wartime metaphors are now commonplace, this pandemic is not, of course, a war in literal sense — people are being killed by a disease, not each other. But it does share many of the same characteristics and a similar “rally around the flag” sense. The most obvious of these is the unity against a common enemy, with a lot of agreement across parties and across the public. There is also clear sense of “national effort,” and some extremely large government spending on its way.
That’s not to say that there have been no controversies — there have been debates over strategy and the policy response — though these can easily be drowned out by the enormity of the wider situation.
This is not unique to the UK Polling elsewhere has shown that the crisis has helped incumbents
in other countries too. Emmanuel Macron in France, Italy’s Giuseppe Conte and Canada’s Justin Trudeau have also seen their ratings improve. Even in the strongly polarised US, Donald Trump’s approval ratings have seen gains.
But what is specific to the UK is the perfect storm providing the tailwind to the Conservatives.
The post-election bounce for Johnson and his party was still very much in evidence when the coronavirus became the dominant story, and was likely boosted by Brexit on January 31.
—Bloomberg