Gathering Storm: Boris battles to avoid being damned by the verdict of history
In the early evening of 31 March 1982, what may have been the pivotal meeting of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership took place in her office in the House of Commons. Intelligence reports received in London that day had confirmed that the Argentinians were about to invade the undefended Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic. Britain had no way of stopping the attack. The Prime Minister gathered with the Defence Secretary John Nott and officials. The consensus was that this invasion was all terribly embarrassing and depressing but there was nothing to be done other than lodge a diplomatic appeal. Britain simply did not have the firepower to reclaim territory 8,000 miles away. Those in the meeting knew that in a couple of days the public would find out, when the looming invasion happened, and the country would be humiliated. The participants in the meeting were mired deep in gloom, confusion and preoccupations of defeat. Thatcher looked, in vain, for some support and a way to resist.
Charles Moore tells the story of what happened next that evening with characteristic economy and great style in the closing chapters of the first volume of his definitive three volume life of Thatcher.
The First Sea Lord, Henry Leach, arrived, having received the intelligence report and rushed back to London from Portsmouth. With some difficulty, when Commons staff tried to block his way, he made his way into the meeting with the Prime Minister. Moore records that Leach despised Nott, on the basis that he thought, incorrectly, that Nott hated the Navy and had set about destroying it in the deep defence cuts that took place after Thatcher came to power in 1979.
Leach challenged Nott and the consensus that nothing could be done to retake the Falklands. He made it clear to Thatcher that she had to launch a task force. Thatcher was confused and thought that sailing there would take three days, rather than three weeks.
Can we do it? asked Thatcher. “We can,” said Leach, “and we must, because if we don’t do it, if we pussyfoot, we’ll be living in a totally different country whose word will count for nothing.”
Thatcher smiled and followed Leach’s advice. The task force departed a few days later. The Falkland Islands were retaken, at cost, and Thatcher and Britain avoided historical ignominy.
Such are the intensely difficult decisions that make or destroy a Prime Minister and define their historical reputation. If Thatcher had gone along with the consensus that evening – followed the bulk of the expert, diplomatic advice – she would have been ruined. Instead, as an inexpert but alert civilian she interrogated the officials and members of the military hierarchy and applied common sense judgment blended with bravery. That is leadership.
There is no perfect formula for getting such a call right. Luck and timing is involved. Anthony Eden, a war hero of the First World War and veteran statesman, must have thought as Prime Minister during Suez in 1956 that he was being brave or at least pragmatic when he sanctioned British involvement in a plot that then went disastrously wrong. It finished him.
Tony Blair saw the situation with admirable clarity on 9/11 and decided instantly that because this was an attack on the Western idea, of democracy and freedom, he must stand with America at all costs. It was the at all costs part that undid him later over Iraq.
For all his flaws, and for all that he had left Britain particularly badly exposed to the impact of the financial crisis because he did not regulate the financial system properly, Gordon Brown understood the detail in 2008 and acted, with the Chancellor Alistair Darling.
But to stand a chance of getting it right at these moments of destiny and decision it is a prerequisite that a Prime Minister must be paying attention. In driving terms, to stand a chance of making the lucky or correct call their eyes must be on the road. They cannot be taking a nap in a lay-by.
Was Boris Johnson paying full attention in February this year as Covid-19 swept in?
That mystery will be central in the public inquiry into Covid-19 when it comes, and come it will. The government would do better to announce such an inquiry soon and get ahead of what will become a clamour for answers once this phase of lockdown is done. Otherwise the government will have to be dragged to conceding it by parliament, the public and media pressure.
This week Boris demonstrated that he is fighting hard to get back to get back to his bouncy best, beating up Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer at PMQs and with a grin telling European Union negotiators to get on and do a post-Brexit deal by putting a “tiger in the tank.” While it cheered some Tories, it looked a little hollow. Boris boosterism sounds “very last year” when Britain has so many deaths from Covid-19.
This week I interviewed Sir Lawrence Freedman for BBC Radio 4’s Week in Westminster and asked him how a public inquiry should be constituted to glean the most useful insights and lessons. As a historian he was a panellist on the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War and he has turned his examination of the minutes and papers relating to the early response to the pandemic into a crisp, compelling, chilling narrative published recently.
Not everything went wrong with the British response, as Freedman makes clear. Balance and perspective is required. Many other European states made mistakes. But Britain was very late into lockdown and mistakes on care homes contributed to a high toll. Those of us who took comfort in March in the idea that there was a pandemic plan, and that the science was being followed gradually, were mistaken. There was a plan alright, but it was for flu. The plan was for the wrong disease.
The critical period was weeks before Boris fell seriously ill. What was needed in mid or late February was the equivalent of that meeting Thatcher held ahead of the invasion of the Falkland Islands, to test the assumptions of the officials and to challenge the consensus.
One can imagine the scientist Margaret Thatcher, or Gordon Brown, or David Cameron, convening just such a meeting in February and unearthing what would have been the most useful insight at that perilous moment. Namely, there was no “science”, or no single “scientific advice” to follow. The scientists were deeply divided, confused and having to learn fast. A politician would have to decide.
At that point a fully switched on politician’s antennae would be twitching like mad. If the scientists were split behind the scenes then, good grief, the civilian leadership had only one responsible course open, and that was to err on the side of extreme caution and to move fast on multiple fronts.
Instead, February is a black hole for Number 10. Johnson was at Chevening (not Chequers) for almost a fortnight that month. Those were the weeks when opportunities were missed on testing, PPE and preparing care homes. The virus was spreading and northern Italy was going under. The Health Secretary Matt Hancock and assorted officials became more worried. But the Prime Minister was distant for a large part of the month after a ridiculous and substandard reshuffle .
Indeed, the dominant preoccupations of a dysfunctional Number 10 in February now look ridiculous. It is instructive to read the headlines in February. On the 13 February the Chancellor resigned in the reshuffle because he refused to be Dom-compliant, that is he rightly would not undertake to be subordinate, in effect, to Dominic Cummings, chief advisor. The focus that month was on weird rows and nastiness, involving assorted fights about advisors. One of the young mavericks hired by Cummings had to be removed in embarrassing circumstances on 17 February.
All this and more will be picked over when there is an inquiry.
Boris Johnson’s best hope when that comes – and his best hope in a battle to avoid ending up damned by history – rests on the public being forgiving or wanting to forget. Sometimes this happens after trauma, as it did in 1923 when Britons were keen to move on and to get beyond the flu pandemic and the dread of contagion that had followed the First World War. In that year the Empire stadium opened at Wembley and the crowd had to be cleared from the pitch during the FA Cup final. Wives won the right to divorce husbands for adultery. There were two royal weddings, the tomb of Tutankhamen was uncovered in Egypt and the Radio Times began publication.
A swift rebound in the economy would help too. As a lucky politician of considerable skill Johnson should never be underestimated. In early 2019 he was derided and regarded as a lost figure by many of his enemies. In less than a year he led his party to a stunning election victory when he secured a majority of 80.
But here we all are and the election feels like it took place in another epoch. The return to school has been a shambles. The lockdown rules are now confused. The government is mired in a growing scandal over its botched attempts to create a test and trace app. And the questions mount up about what happened in the preliminary phases when key decisions were not taken.
The person who was in a position with at least half a chance to discover early on what could be coming and to take evasive action on behalf of the country was Boris Johnson. Yet when history came calling in February it appears he was not there. There’s no way round this. Want to be Prime Minister? This is what it is about.