Boris needs to reboot his government after a series of chaotic U-turns

In a sharp volte-face, the government last night announced that thousands of English secondary students will be required to wear face coverings in communal school areas, such as corridors and playgrounds. The new regulations, which will be a mandatory requirement in areas with a high prevalence of coronavirus, come just two days after Jenny Harries, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer, said the scientific evidence for such action is “not strong”. 

This is the latest in a long series of U-turns which have characterised the government’s coronavirus strategy. We have seen similar reversals on housing evictions, on A-levels, on the immigration health surcharge, free school means, early return of schools, NHS contact tracing app, transport quarantine, bereavement scheme access for ancillary NHS staff, face coverings, remote parliamentary voting, the coronavirus testing target, and community testing. I could go on…

While much of the public has been altogether forgiving of the government’s mistakes in recent months (with the Conservatives leading Labour in the polls) it may have less tolerance for a pattern of incompetence.

Indeed, Conservative MPs are deeply concerned that the government has underestimated the damage that such unstable governance will do to the party’s long-term prospects. One senior backbencher told Reaction: “People are understandably looking at the situation thinking, ‘what is going on in that madhouse?’”

Some have noted the absence of Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, who has been recovering from an operation in recent weeks, as the reason for a renewed sense of misdirection. The theory is that his iron grip over the operation was such that, in his absence, few people in Downing Street felt they had the authority to take the lead on the exams fiasco. This supposedly led the Prime Minister’s team to rely on the Education Secretary, who failed to notice a problem in the algorithm until the weekend after results were published. 

Nevertheless, most of the U-turns listed above preceded Cummings’ hospitalisation. This includes the reversal over the easily-avoidable and deeply unpopular decision to suspend food vouchers for the poorest students in the country. For a government that prides itself on its perceived political acuity, it has been consistently slow to pick up on incoming political storms. “The reality is that they don’t understand government,” said a Labour staffer. “They run it like a campaign. It’s a core, insular staff, surrounded by surrogates who don’t know what’s really going on. That’s dumb, especially when the core staff is not competent.” 

A similar point has been made by Conservative insiders who highlight the Prime Minister’s January reshuffle as the first major error of this government. It prioritised loyalty over competence, with figures such as Gavin Williamson being given major Cabinet positions because of their role in Johnson’s Conservative leadership campaign, rather than their managerial abilities. Williamson’s appointment handed the Department for Education, one of the most politically sensitive briefs in Whitehall, to a man who, according to one of his parliamentary colleagues, “doesn’t run anything… because he spends all his time intriguing in parliament, briefing against people.” 

While it must be said that the devolved administrations have conducted reversals over similar issues, there is a particular absurdity to the behaviour of Westminster politicians in such circumstances. UK cabinet ministers regularly follow the fatal pattern of vehemently denying even considering a change in direction just days, or even hours, before conducting one. 

Several days before the exams U-turn, Schools Minister Nick Gibb opposed changing policy in the most vehement terms, telling the BBC that teacher-predicted grades could not work: “A young person goes to employers, says they’ve got these A-level grades and the employer says, ‘oh but they’re 2020, we had to discount them’.”

With similar confidence in the early days of the pandemic, the government implied that countries such as Italy were taking a different path because they didn’t have Britain’s scientific expertise or governmental maturity, before implementing their lockdown strategy less than a fortnight later, albeit in a more disorderly fashion.

This seemingly arrogant, incompetent handling of government business has had severe consequences for the Union. In Scotland, it has fed into a sense of chaos in Westminster, a continuation of the Brexit mayhem, with recent polls suggesting a surge in support for independence. It must be said that while Sturgeon’s government has made similar errors to Johnson’s, the First Minister has still managed to keep up the appearance of competence, and avoided entrapping herself with unachievable targets. 

Not all hope is lost however, as recent signs suggest that the government has grasped the need for coherent leadership. Yesterday, Conservatives will have been impressed by the Prime Minister’s intervention in the debate over singing “Rule Britannia!” at the Last Night of the Proms. Johnson appeared to channel the mood of the nation when he said: “I think it’s time we stopped our cringing embarrassment about our history, about our traditions and about our culture. And we stop the general bout of self-recrimination and wetness.” It was a well-timed comment – delivered just as social justice campaigners overreached – which made Johnson appear at once authoritative and reasonable. 

The government is also pushing ahead, unperturbed, with the reopening of schools, having faced up to the teachers’ unions. In a speech at a school library today, Johnson reiterated the importance of returning children to free time education. “The risk to your health is not from Covid,” he told pupils. “Statistically speaking, your chances of suffering from that disease are very, very low. The greatest risk you face now is of continuing to be out of school.” In this effort he has the overwhelming weight of public opinion behind him. 

And behind the scenes, changes to the machinery of government are underway to avoid a repeat of the exams fiasco. The permanent secretary at the Department for Education, Jonathan Slater, was dispatched today as part of the clear-out following the A-level crisis. A statement released by Downing Street was unusually blunt about the reasoning: “The Prime Minister has concluded that there is a need for fresh official leadership at the Department for Education.” It follows yesterday’s departure of Sally Collier, the head of England’s exams regulator. 

There will also be opportunities for the government to frame the media agenda in the days ahead. The first phase of the Kick Start scheme is due to launch soon, promising hundreds of thousands of jobs for young people and allowing the UK Treasury to increase subsidies to Scotland. It also presents a fresh opportunity for the Chancellor to promote the fact that Britain has maintained a relatively low rate of unemployment.

The fundamental problem, however, is that U-turns are the consequence of bad governance. Johnson and his ministers will have ample opportunities to reshape the government’s approach to coronavirus over the coming weeks – but these openings will amount to nothing if they continue to handle Whitehall departments and the media with arrogance and incompetence.