Covid exposed to what extent the British government is over-centralized

The attitude of the administration of Boris Johnson to the mayor and the districts of London revealed an institutional range with a point of view from top to bottom

While time derives after the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the first locking of the pandemic, it was noted at what speed a period sometimes called the greatest national emergency since the Second World War is forgotten.

Yes, the COVVI-19 investigation continuous. Yes, the National Covid Commemorative Wall hard, with a campaign to make it permanent. Yet even if the virus was a cause of the death of Nearly 227,000o people In the United Kingdom, there is a meaning of this one which fades from national memory, as well as the calls to “maintain a social distance” vanish with sidewalks.

This collective amnesia needs hardening. Those that Covid killed should remain in our thoughts, just like those in mourning and those who are still affected by the symptoms of the disease. This, in turn, should keep the spirit focused on other forms of loss and pain inflicted, and on the lessons to be learned, especially on the way the national government works too often.

What happened to the London government in the hands of the National Administration of Boris Johnson during Covid says a lot. The capital, which houses around nine million people and the core heated to the whites of the British economy, has been struck stronger by the “novel coronavirus” than any other part of the country.

The first case in London was confirmed on February 12, 2020. In an international city teeming every day of commuters and visitors, the virus could hardly proliferate at high speed. Again Not before March 16 The elected leader of London, Sadiq Khan, was invited to a meeting of the Government Civil Contact Committee (Cobmat), where high -level decisions are made in a major emergency.

Later in the day, Johnson told a television audience that “it seems that London has now had a few weeks in advance” everywhere else in terms of illness that reaches its peak. This is certainly the case. Over 400 cases had been confirmed In the city – almost half of the total for all of England – and more than 20 deaths.

Khan thinks that more could have and should have been done earlier. In November 2023, he said to the investigation coded that he had felt “held in the dark“By the national government on some of the things that were concerned in previous weeks, and that it had been informed of them earlier,” preventive measures “could have been taken, including in areas where it did not have the necessary powers.” Many times “, he written in a declaration“Our plea has become incredible or ignored”.

Even before Johnson's first announcement of locking, the streets of London emptied, as is its public transport network. Transport for London, which is highly dependent on prices income, came a few minutes after lacked money. In May 2020, the government provided TFL with a 1.6 billion emergency rescue.

The town hall noted that Johnson had moved faster to help private rail operators. And he was not better satisfied with Attached conditions to the High Agreement, in particular by forcing Khan to increase prices, reduce concessions and undertake an examination of TFL finances. A “working group” to include “government representatives” was appointed to “supervise operational decisions”.

It was the beginning of a hostile takeover, which would last much more than two years, leaving the best brass colleagues and in TFL City Hall in constantly negotiating short -term financing agreements when they should have continued their work. The historical context was, of course, that Prime Minister Johnson had been the predecessor of Khan as mayor. He and his henchmen were sure they knew better how to manage things that the person that the Londoners had chosen for the task.

If Khan's descending treatment was motivated by this special engineering form found in the circles of Johnson before its fall in grace linked to the covid, the comparable experience of the London district seems to have been more generally felt across the country: emails arriving the day before the last set of regulations on the pandemic content were to enter into force; A promise of the unknown of Robert Jenrick to give advice “whatever it was necessary” to get through the crisis that was not as generous as it sounded for the first time.

The desire and even, in certain respects, the need for national governments to requisition control during national crises is not difficult to understand: rapid decisions must be taken and a rapid action undertaken; Time can be too tight for consultation and collaboration.

But does that lead to better results? Can it be justified when democratic entities closer to the soil can be easily recruited from the largest company on which all are interdeedably engaged? And can the exploitation of desperate circumstances for the end of the political establishment be acceptable at any time, that the worst of them? Just as people taken by the disease should be written in the history of the United Kingdom, mismanagement and the abusive use of the British state should also improper use of its historically over-centralized power.

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