Enough of the nudge strategy Boris, you’re Prime Minister, not a puppeteer

What a difference a month makes in the danger that Covid poses to the nation. The virus had dropped down the news agenda, despite reports of rising transmissions. It had been five weeks since the last government coronavirus briefing, and Christmas seemed safe.

Now, suddenly, we’re being bombarded with warnings about a looming NHS crisis and threats of Boris Johnson’s Plan B being triggered or, worse, lockdowns and bans on indoor gatherings if cases continue to accelerate.

In the past few days, Sajid Javid, the Health Secretary, has appeared, grave, at the podium in Downing Street, the NHS Confederation and the doctors’ union (the BMA) have called for the immediate return of face masks and working from home and Professor Neil Ferguson, the original voice of doom, has been back on the Today show.

It’s almost as if they had all coordinated their watches to launch simultaneous attacks on the public consciousness and lure us away from our false sense of security. 

Before the pandemic, such a notion may have seemed far-fetched, but now it is perfectly plausible that a level of psychological manipulation is at play. It even has a name, “nudge theory”, and there is a “nudge unit” within government, otherwise known as the Behavioural Insights Team. 

Set up by David Cameron, its role is to drive change or “build buy-in”, as the Americans, who first came up with the concept, would say. 

Britain’s nudge unit was behind the introduction of the sugar tax in 2018 and is now trying to ease us off meat-rich diets. But it is with Covid that it has come into its own, helping to formulate the government’s response to the pandemic and nudging us into compliance with unpopular constraints.

Nudge theory, according to Laura Dodsworth, author of A State of Fear: how the UK government weaponised fear during the Covid-19 pandemic, involves “sneaky attempts to prime, prepare and prod us into their desired mindset and course of action without us ever realising we are being coerced”.

To begin with, most of us allowed ourselves to be nudged, trusting that ministers and their advisers were following the science. But, as Dodsworth says, ‘once nudge is seen, it can’t be unseen’.

I now see nudge everywhere. Javid’s, “if people don’t wear masks when they really should in a really crowded place” and “if they’re not washing their hands and stuff, it’s going to hit us all” is classic nudge.

As is entreating people to meet outside where possible, ensuring good ventilation – a seemingly innocuous demand aimed at moving us back, incrementally, to Covid curbs. And then there is the nudge punchline: “If we can get through this period by doing the ‘small things’ we can enjoy Christmas with our loved ones.”

Even Johnson insisting there is no need for Plan B is suspicious, raising a possibility we weren’t yet considering, like Mrs Micawber vowing repeatedly never to desert Mr Micawber.

It’s clever. Dodsworth claims nudge theory leverages the threat of lockdown to win public obedience over lesser impositions, such as Covid passports or booster jabs or vaccinating children.

Is it too much of a stretch to suggest that the unit’s tentacles extend beyond Whitehall and Westminster?

The SAGE scientists (with a few notable exceptions) are clearly part of the plot, with Dr Jenny Harries, chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, taking on the Patrick Vallance role this week and selecting statistics to suit the doomsday narrative.

It was overkill by Vallance, the government’s chief medical officer, last November, predicting a Covid death toll of 4,000 people a day, that exposed the full extent of government nudge tactics.

The ploy depends on a gullible public and that pushed us towards peak gullible. 

The public was also bludgeoned by the BBC’s own nudge unit, spearheaded by its medical and health editors, Fergus Walsh and Hugh Pym, who brought ICU trauma to our screens nightly, to help us all save the NHS.

The collateral damage of lockdowns on poor, multi-generational families crammed into grim high rises was seldom mentioned.

This winter, a combination of too much nudge and the reassurance brought by the successful vaccine roll-out has altered public perceptions.

 In Manchester, a pharmacist told the Today programme on Friday that the supply of vaccines exceeded demand because people think Covid is over, they’ve moved on.

Nudging is failing, and our leaders only have themselves to blame. While exhorting us to sacrifice freedoms, it has been business as usual for them. From Boris’s Christmas “bubble”, to Professor Ferguson’s and Dominic Cummings’s lockdown excursions, to gatherings of global glitterati, royals and eco champions included, up close and mask-free.

Professor Susan Michie, who sits on the Scientific Pandemic Insights Group on Behaviours, a sort of super nudge unit, said leadership is needed to motivate people to adhere to interventions. Clearly, we can’t be trusted to think for ourselves.

But the data shows that people began staying at home a fortnight before the first lockdown was introduced in March 2020. We are quite capable of adjusting our behaviour using our own free will.

In fact, nudge has gone full circle. Fuel sales soared by 80 per cent on the day that Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, prompted lengthy queues by assuring drivers there were no shortages.

A cartoon by Matt in the Daily Telegraph yesterday read the mood: “If the government publicly denied there were shortages of booster jabs, there’d be queues round the block.”

The more they nudge, the less we budge.