PandemicHow the U.K. Government Managed the Balance between Taking Credit and Apportioning Blame for Its Covid Response
How does a government manage a problem like COVID-19? Political scientists have long noted that governance is not just about managing the problem itself: Governance is also the managing of wider perceptions and expectations of how the problem is being managed. To manage the perceptions of how it was managing the crisis, the U.K. government used four key narratives: unprecedented government activism; working to plan; national security, wartime unity and sacrifice; and scientific guidance.
How does a government manage a problem like COVID-19? Political scientists have long noted that governance is not just about managing the problem itself – in this case, through the provision of PPE, a wide-ranging furlough scheme, and the implementation of public safety measures. A core facet of governing – often referred to as ‘statecraft’ – is to manage wider perceptions and expectations of how the problem is being managed. A key aim here is to make sure that the apportioning of blame and credit is directed into politically favorable channels. A government’s ability to manage this balance effectively is as central to the governance of an issue as managing the issue itself.
In the UK, as in other countries, the management of the COVID-19 crisis threw up a wide range of successes and failures. The government drew plaudits for its furlough scheme and the vaccine roll-out but was widely criticized for presiding over comparatively high death rates, its failure to protect care homes and its botched attempts at a track and trace system (to name but a few examples). The government can, of course, rightly claim that the crisis unfolded at an unprecedented scale and pace, forcing ministers to make rapid decisions in a fast-moving environment without any clear road map for them to follow. All the more need, then, for a carefully managed statecraft strategy.
Depoliticization as Statecraft
A key aspect of successful statecraft is ensuring that it is the government who control the narrative on where the balance between credit and blame should fall. Political scientists have long noted that a key tool at ministers’ disposal is their ability to ‘depoliticize’ actions that might damage their government’s popularity – and/or to ‘politicize’ those decisions that they want to claim credit for.
If, as the late Jim Bulpitt once said, statecraft is the ‘art of winning elections’, then depoliticization can aid a government’s electability by deflecting responsibility for things that go wrong. Pete Burnham, whose work has done much to highlight this type of statecraft, has pointed out that UK governments have become increasingly prone towards depoliticizing major decisions. This is partly because, over the course of the postwar period, most attempts at UK economic management have resulted in a notable lack of success. In this context, governance becomes as much about managing failure and public expectations as it is about trying to achieve results.