How the U.K. Government Managed the Balance between Taking Credit and Apportioning Blame for Its Covid Response
In recent years, our understanding of depoliticization has deepened considerably. Early literature highlighted ways in which governments displaced responsibility for key decisions onto ostensibly independent institutions or ‘rules-based’ policy making procedures. These processes help governments to dilute, or even completely displace, blame for any policy blunders that might occur.
Depoliticization and Story-Telling
More contemporary literature has shown that depoliticization can work in increasingly complex ways. At the forefront of recent scholarship has been a recognition that depoliticization is not always a singular governmental act (as in the case of transferring responsibility for monetary policy to the Bank of England) but an ongoing and dynamic ‘discursive’ process. Political scientists have also come to recognize that processes of depoliticization (shedding blame) often occur simultaneously with attempts at politicization (taking credit). Thus, governments are often caught up in an ongoing process of discursively narrating this shifting balance of responsibility.
A recent study has brought together a number of these insights by showing that ministers often use ‘storytelling’ to help them create these politicizing and depoliticizing effects. Ministers will often narrate ‘stories’ that allow them to shift responsibility between various actors, allowing them to manage the balance between blame and credit.
Building on these insights, we conducted a study of the UK government’s attempts to narrate their management of the pandemic. Through a detailed analysis of the government’s daily press briefings, we examined the various stories that ministers used to manage the balance between taking credit and apportioning blame. Our study identified four key narratives, each of which had various politicizing or depoliticizing effects:
Unprecedented government activism. This narrative stressed that ministers were ready to take whatever measures were necessary to tackle the crisis. This was a politicizing story that promoted and talked-up a number of (claimed) governmental successes, including the expansion of testing and the provision of a furlough scheme to protect the economy. This framing of the government’s response to the crisis was prominent early on, but began to subside by the end of the briefings, as ministers grew increasingly keen to return to business as usual.
National security, wartime unity, and sacrifice. These combined narratives framed the crisis as a battle against a deadly opponent, requiring an urgent, wartime-type response from both the government and the public, with an emphasis on the need for national cohesion. This was a largely depoliticizing story, which often sought to close down criticism of the government’s response, given the need for the country to pull together. This narrative was also more prominent during the early part of the crisis, as ministers sought to prepare people for the worst effects of the outbreak.
Working to plan. This narrative framed ministerial actions as part of a rationally unfolding, coherent plan of action, thereby creating a politicizing impression of governing competence, foresight, and readiness. This story grew more emphatic as time progressed, in response to growing perceptions of the government’s mishandling of the crisis.
Scientific guidance. This depoliticizing narrative helped to place decisions ‘at one remove’ from government by stressing that ministerial decisions were based primarily on the advice of their scientific advisers. By drawing on the epistemic status of science and medical expertise, ministers made repeated claims that their decision-making was being ‘guided by the science’, helping to displace potential blame for any problems that these decisions might incur. This framing was notable throughout the pandemic.
The COVID-19 crisis provides us with a unique case study of ministerial attempts to try to govern a range of highly complex policy problems in real time. The unprecedented scale of the problem and the rate at which it unfolded, created a crisis moment in which the government was forced to make quick decisions in response to an ever-changing set of immensely challenging problems. Our analysis highlights their constantly shifting attempts to ‘hop’ between these different stories as they attempted to balance their management of the crisis with the broader ‘statecraft’ aim of politicizing their successes whilst depoliticizing their myriad failures.
Peter Kerr is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham. Steve Kettell is Associate Professor in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. This article, whichdraws on the authors’ published work in the British Journal of Politics and International Relations,is published courtesy of the British Politics and Policy at LSE.
