Boris Johnson could lose his ‘red wall' seats due to pandemic incompetence

There is nothing more painful in political life than when two cherished principles pull in exactly opposite directions. Boris Johnson’s government is discovering that the hard way, with much demanded public health measures likely to alienate, and in some cases impoverish, many of his new-found voters.

The government is effectively closing down the economy again in vast swathes of the country. In Tier 3 (very high risk), the shutdown is explicit with pubs, bars, gyms and leisure centres all set to close. In Tier 2 (high risk), it is death by a thousand cuts with pubs told they can only serve people who gather from the same household. Some scientists in Sage are now pressing the government to go further, with a full national lockdown and all the devastating consequences that would have.

While a regional approach is maintained, the places on the highest alert are disproportionately likely to be along the “red wall” of seats, which the Conservatives now consider their electoral base.

Instead of the promised economic uplift, as a reward for voting Conservative and voting Brexit, these areas are getting the worst of the pandemic restrictions. They locked down early when Covid was a “London problem” in April, but with lockdown now regionalised, London is allowed (for now) to get on with life while the virus is more prevalent elsewhere.

It is hardly a surprise that both the incidence of Covid and the economic pain of subsequent lockdowns is being felt so acutely in northern towns – the relatively deprived communities around Merseyside, Tyneside, Teesside, Humberside and Greater Manchester – and parts of the Midlands. In contrast to the leafy suburbs of the southeast or to rustic Dorset and Devon. There are a lot of people in overcrowded accommodation; many multigenerational families living in close contact; a predominance of face-to-face jobs that can’t be carried out by Zoom conferences; work that is necessary for survival and can’t be given up because there is an ominous cough and sniffle in the family; and a high dependence on public transport. Meanwhile, the university students who breathe life into northern cities are proving to be highly efficient vectors of the disease.

Residents in these afflicted areas would have no particular reason to blame the government for their misfortune were it not for one piece of serious incompetence. In most countries where there are areas with rising infections there is an effective test and trace system to isolate clusters and super-spreading individuals. Germany, Korea, Sweden, China and Japan are, in different ways, controlling the disease in this fashion. Highly targeted action can then follow whether supported by rules or voluntary compliance.

But in the UK, the test and trace system is proving a disaster because of a combination of poor design, over-centralisation, defective software, inefficient and predatory private providers and poor management under the politically appointed leadership of Lady Dido Harding (some say that pop singers Dido and Lady Gaga would combine to do a better job).

Rather than admit to this failure – devolving power away from the centre, or inviting the Germans, Koreans or Chinese to run the system for us, or both – the government struggles on without the key policy instrument required to contain the disease. Confused, contradictory and changing messaging has aggravated the problem.

The government is trying to shelter from some of the opprobrium raining down on ministers by “consulting” local representatives, especially the increasingly vocal elected mayors in Manchester and Liverpool. But “consultation” seems to involve being told politely what is going to happen rather than ignored altogether. It is more about getting Labour leaders in the north to dip their hands in the economic bloodshed of lockdown than it is genuine power-sharing.  

Meanwhile, if posh suburbs, like Altrincham in Manchester, and surrounding country areas with low infection rates are excluded from restrictions there will be a further breakdown of the sense that “we are all in this together”. Red wall areas of deprivation are being singled out for economic punishment through lockdown as well as suffering from the disease itself. And discrimination within the region is magnified by division between regions: north and south.

Unpicking that deep-rooted divide is a task which has defied the best efforts of successive governments, over decades. Different policies and vast amounts of money have been invested in: development areas, special development areas, enterprise zones, regional development agencies, regeneration schemes, local enterprise partnerships, as well as endless permutations and combinations of grants, loans, tax breaks, skill-training schemes, innovation funds and infrastructure. Taking work to the workers and workers to the work. The magic of the market and the sinews of the state. But none has made Middlesbrough, Oldham, Knowsley and Hull more like Reading, Basingstoke, Bournemouth and Bristol.

Nonetheless there are still some things ministers could do now to improve matters, even if the immediate political returns are meagre.

The first is to do what ministers say they want to do: devolve genuine power to elected mayors in big cities and to local councils everywhere. Almost every town and city of any age has a town hall, usually a sad reminder of the days when civic pride was real and councillors had real responsibility and power. The government could start to show its confidence in local government by handing over both the resources and the responsibility to run test and trace, rather than just “consulting”.

The second, and related, point is to reform the civil service and quangocracy so that it no longer has such a London-centric ethos. I understand that this is what Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove are trying to do. As someone who spent half my life in Yorkshire and Scotland before becoming a part of the metropolitan elite, I am with them, at least on this.

I recall vividly from my period as secretary of state the fierce resistance to my efforts to get a couple of new institutions (the Green Investment Bank and the British Business Bank) housed out of London (eventually succeeding when the GIB went to Scotland and BBB to Sheffield). There was also ferocious opposition from the science establishment to locating innovation centres (Catapults) outside the triangle of Oxford, Cambridge and London. Some years ago, I canvassed the idea of sending the Treasury to Liverpool which attracted mirth and derision. There is a real challenge here for Cummings to get his teeth into.

A third and crucial issue is resources. The money is needed now to ease the pain of locked-down local economies and then continued support to “level up” the regions. That isn’t just about raising more money from a tax base which is inevitably concentrated in the richer areas: the revenue has to be redistributed. That means raising money by taxing the incomes, the property values and the spending of richer southerners and transferring it to poorer northern communities. The snag is that doing so pits the interests of traditional Conservative voters against new Conservative voters in the red wall.

In consequence, I see no sign that the hero of the spring, Rishi Sunak, has any intention whatsoever of playing Robin Hood in the forthcoming round of Christmas pantomimes. Instead, he will be dragged kicking and screaming from an increasingly fiscally conservative Treasury to plug a few holes in the red wall. In the monumental task of supporting the poorest parts of the country, and keeping the Conservatives’ coalition of voters together, his interventions are most unlikely to be enough.

Sir Vince Cable is the former leader of the Liberal Democrats and served as secretary of state for business, innovation and skills from 2010 to 2015