Has the pandemic changed the message – as well as the medium of politics?

As the UK moves towards the end of its latest – and, it is to be hoped, its last – lockdown, you can hear two conflicting views about what awaits.

One is that life will never be the same again; the pandemic has changed everything, forever: we will be warier, less tactile, more family-minded, more inclined to live in the moment. The other is that the strangeness of the past year – good and bad – will melt away; if not overnight, then far more quickly than now seems feasible, and life will soon return to what we remember as “normal”.

Probably, it will be an awkward and unforeseen mixture. But there is one area of life where the prospect of a past gone forever is already being discussed with what seems a special trepidation – and this is our domestic politics.

Given the central role that political leadership has played over the past year and the changes that our whole political process has undergone, it is perhaps in the order of things that speculation abounds about where we might go from here.  How substantial are the changes that have taken place? Will UK politics return to normal – should politics return to normal?

My attention was tweaked most recently by an article by Andrew Roe-Crines, a politics lecturer at Liverpool University, who not only poses the question, “Can we get our familiar normal back?”, but concludes with the fervent hope that we can. I am not so sure. Or, rather, I think we may well be able to revert to something like our nice familiar political normal – but should we? Might there not be an opportunity here to improve not just the political process, but the way politicians communicate with the people? Indeed, might such a shift be already in progress?

Among the most obvious changes are in Parliament, although it is true that wonders have been worked to try to replicate age-old procedure in the new world of social distancing, self-isolation and Zoom. Equally obvious is that some basics of the UK Parliament are better suited to the new world than others.

The adversarial system does not emerge well. The configuration of the two houses of parliament, with government and opposition ranged against each other, is akin to the confrontation of two armies. The point is (almost, if not entirely) lost when those armies are so depleted; yet the architecture is unsuited to anything else. Most parliaments of a later vintage are built in the form of a hemisphere, which also suits systems where there are more than two major parties (which, at times, includes ours).

Of course, many foreign viewers hooked on the weekly relays of Prime Minister’s Questions see the noisy and spirited confrontations as part of olde England’s folkloric charm. And there may be a sound political purpose in requiring weekly proof of the survival of the politically and rhetorically fittest.

But had we not perhaps reached a point where the theatrical element was drowning the substance? Might those people be right, who argue that the houses of parliament should be preserved as a museum and replaced with a new legislature? I would certainly grieve for the history, but less, maybe, for the politics.

The parliamentary committees, on the other hand, have flourished during the pandemic. MPs and peers have largely got to grips with the technology, and far less is lost from a remote presence than at a full debate. Indeed, something is also gained. Our legislators suddenly come across more as authentic individuals than as party factotums; what’s more, many have learned to “stage” their Zoom backdrop to say more about themselves.

Gone now, for the most part, is the innocence of a chaotic sitting-room that marked some of our lords’ and ladyships’ early appearances. They are their own PR professionals, now. Is it such a bad thing that we see the books and the artworks they would like us to see – or, by mistake, their toddler or cat? Is it a plus or a minus that a good number of voters now know that the health secretary, Matt Hancock, inhabits a red study?

Or that somewhere after Brexit was “done”, government ministers seemed to have been ordered to appear beside a union flag? I tend to think that the first has become a humanising asset, and that the second received the raised-eyebrow bemusement it deserved.

As for those famed Downing Street briefings, it seems that in the early months, the number of viewers far surpassed expectations, even granting that every day the sense of national crisis seemed to deepen. The people had an appetite to hear direct from those governing them. They learned pretty quickly who they trusted: step forward Chris Whitty and Jonathan Van-Tam.

Downing Street learned, too, which ministers were the better communicators. Boris Johnson himself remained the attraction-in-chief: his big-occasion evening broadcasts attracted more than 20 million viewers, equal to the Queen’s first coronavirus broadcast, and more than double her usual audience on Christmas Day.  

Given this, it is regrettable that Downing Street has apparently abandoned its plan for daily broadcast briefings, either by a minister or the official spokesperson. All right, so there is a risk that familiarity would breed contempt; but more regular and direct communication from those who govern us about how they see what is happening, what they propose to do about it, and why, would be a positive addition to national life – not least because there is a real danger if those in power are silent when there are so many other messages jostling for our attention.

Whatever complaints may be made about Boris Johnson – and there are many – he is an adept and effective communicator. He did himself few favours by returning to the podium while still recovering from his bout of Covid in the spring, but his latest briefings have shown him returning to form. And an ability to communicate with everyone, not just colleagues or people from your own circle, is a huge asset in a political leader today.

He has also, it seems, been learning. He has got to grips with the audience-less PMQs; and has adapted his tone at TV briefings to address an audience that is now more weary than scared. Since the New Year, he has muted his natural ebullience. Most striking, to me, were the answers at his latest briefing – where he admitted that the considerations, on so-called vaccination passports, for instance, were complicated and needed to be thought out.

This is a new and welcome approach, which opens the way for less yah-boo and more informed discussion. Such shifts may also help to explain the march Johnson seems to have stolen over the Labour leader, Keir Starmer. The successful vaccination campaign may be part of the explanation, but Starmer seems frozen in his lawyerly register.

What once seemed a reassuring seriousness, pitted against the flighty Johnson in Parliament, now comes across as stolid and unresponsive. Johnson communicates with people in their kitchens as well as MPs in the Commons and at their Zoom screens. That versatility has so far eluded Starmer, yet it is vital for a leader wanting to get across a message about the business of daily life.

The next test for politics in the pandemic age will be the campaign for local and mayoral elections in May, some of which were postponed from last year. With restrictions in much of the UK likely still to be in place, communication – direct and virtual – will be key to success; at best, it could make these elections more open and competitive than in the past.

Altogether, there is much to be gleaned from how politics has been conducted in the past year. And, much though we might hanker after a return to “normal”, in politics as elsewhere, many of the enforced changes – from greater directness to more individuality and the advantages of remote communication – deserve to stay.