Boris pitches Brexit and coronavirus as a chance for a fresh start

As the clock ticks for the UK-EU trade talks, and the coronavirus recovery stutters into motion, there has been a concerted attempt from Whitehall in recent days to present the two events as a unified opportunity for the country. Both the Home Secretary and the Chancellor have portrayed Brexit as an opportunity for the UK recovery, rather than the economic liability feared by its critics.

Today the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, announced that the government would tweak its points-based immigration plan to make the application process quicker and cheaper for health and social care workers.

“This will make it easier and quicker for talented global health professionals to work in our brilliant NHS and in eligible occupations in the social care sector,” she told Parliament in a written statement.

The Home Office has emphasised that, in line with the government’s Brexit agenda, the opportunity to live and work in Britain will be open to skilled carers from the entire world, rather than just the continent (though unskilled care workers will not be eligible for the NHS visa). This would have been a more difficult sell prior to the EU referendum. Now that the government is seen to be “taking back control” of immigration, making a standardised system for the entire world seems reasonable and fair, increasing rather than decreasing Britain’s access to key workers.

Michael Gove, the minister for the Cabinet Office, made a statement to the Commons today announcing a new advertising blitz to get British businesses ready for the Brexit cut-off date. It will bear the slogan “Let’s get going”. The mantra applies to Brexit and to the drive towards economic recovery in equal measure.

Over the weekend it was revealed that Chancellor Rishi Sunak plans to implement up to 10 new “free ports” by the end of 2021. The bidding process for towns, cities and regions to gain the designation is expected to be opened in Sunak’s autumn budget, making it a key component of his coronavirus recovery plan.

The winning areas will be legally exempt from the UK’s customs rules and tariff schedule, allowing goods to be imported, manufactured, and exported without incurring national tariffs or VAT. This tariff-free status will apply whether there is a Brexit deal or not.

In theory, these free ports would thus become more attractive to international investment. This may prove to be an effective tool in mitigating the effects of the long-term economic impact of coronavirus on manufacturing towns, but is only possible outside of the EU – free ports are contrary to the rules of the customs union, members of which must charge the tariffs on imports determined by Brussels.

To Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, Brexit and coronavirus both feed into a view they have long held about the British state: that it is not fit for purpose and requires radical transformation. Combined, they provide an even greater opportunity to break down the inertia of senior civil servants, making it easier to achieve their original vision of a more efficient, results-driven government machine.

Gove expressed this desire implicitly in his speech to the Ditchley Foundation, in which he praised President Franklin Roosevelt for empowering institutional reformers in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

“Their role was not to administer existing machines or proclaim abstract virtues, but to act – to achieve real and concrete change in the lives of others,” he said.

It is no secret in Westminster that Gove sees himself as one such institutional reformer – a modern day Harold Ickes to Johnson’s Roosevelt.

The sentiments expressed in that speech were not new to the Covid-19 era, but the coronavirus crisis has made the ambitions of the programme yet more pressing.

Gove highlighted this fresh imperative: “This government was elected on the basis that it would be different from its predecessors, as the Prime Minister set out so brilliantly during the election campaign – and events have only made that mission of change more urgent.”

The Prime Minister’s “Build, build, build” speech on the coronavirus recovery developed many of the same themes, building on the pillars he had already set out in his post-Brexit vision for Britain.

“This is a government that is wholly committed not just to defeating coronavirus, but to using this crisis finally to tackle this country’s great unresolved challenges of the last three decades,” he said.

Replace the words “defeating coronavirus” with “leaving the EU” and Johnson’s rhetoric is almost identical to that found in his 2019 stump speeches.

“We will be creating a new science funding agency to back high risk, high reward projects, because in the next 100 years the most successful societies will be the most innovative societies,” the Prime Minister added.

This is a desire long held by Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s chief adviser, who has written extensively about the need for a British DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) to invest in high risk, high reward scientific projects.

In a 2018 blog about DARPA, Cummings wrote: “Regardless of how you voted in the referendum, reasonable people outside the rancid environment of SW1 should pressure their MPs to take their responsibilities to science x100 more seriously than they do.”

The crisis due to Covid-19 will be seen in Downing Street as merely proving this point again proves a point; greater commitment to innovation, science and technology has always been a key component of the Brexit project as conceived by Cummings.

Reflecting on the 2008 financial crash, Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, said: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. It’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.”

Johnson’s government sees in Brexit and coronavirus an unprecedented opportunity to fundamentally transform Britain.