W.future historians will come to write a story about the pandemic response to Britain, one question in particular is bound to be asked: why, how did the UK experience one of the worst events in the world , who spent so many public figures of 2020 talking about Sweden?
Almost as soon as Boris Johnson announced a national closure at the end of March, British newspaper columnists and professional controversies called for the prime minister to adopt a “Swedish model” – and they still persuaded the same in September. We now know with certainty what public health experts have long been predicting: a mild coronavirus approach does not work. Sweden has recorded far higher mortality rates than its Scandinavian neighbors, suffering a similar economic blow. Even the king of the country thinks he has “failed”.
And yet, through late autumn, with the Covid virus circulating in England, Sweden was still cited as an example to follow. In mid-October, Conservative MP Christopher Chope was in parliament debating the virtues of what he had previously called Sweden as “clear and simple”. Just last month, the Telegraph column Allison Pearson tweeted that she “loved the way Sweden handled the pandemic”.
Indeed, the full-blown cry of “Sweden” from sections of the conservative media was less about Abba’s birthplace, and more about nurturing the idea that Britain could “open up”, if only politics brave enough to do so. Suspects of self-inflicted lockout have promised – and continue to promise – that “herd protection” would save us all, with a consistent demonstration that Sweden would accept this approach as proof.
Our future historians will no doubt also marvel, just as in the imagination of many in southern Britain, Sweden from a dystopia full of violent violence to an example in a few months. The answer is simple: the only small group of people who have spoken so strongly about Sweden’s libertarian refusal to lock down are – newspaper columnists, backbench MPs, funded thinkers without responsible – provided a major opportunity for the British public debate.
This is all very familiar. In my latest book, I document how a backlash of Conservative MPs, anonymous funded thinkers and ubiquitous “unregulated Brexit” media reporters turned from a rural view into a “no-brainer fear ”. During the pandemic, the same strategies were used – often by the same people.
After keeping Norway as a model during the Brexit referendum, Daniel (soon to be lord) Hannan said that we could all be like Sweden. Christopher Snowdon from the Institute of Economic Affairs said Sweden had “demonstrated a more sensible way to balance risk, freedom and the economy”. After successfully mobilizing the European Research Group of Conservative MPs to push for a tough Brexit, Steve Baker even began an act of obedience: the Covid Recovery Group, or CRG for short.
All this conversation about Sweden seems to have influenced the Downing Street decisions. A recent report in the Sunday Times suggested that Johnson chose not to stop a breach in September after a meeting with chancellor Rishi Sunak and three supporters of a herd defense strategy: Sunetra Gupta and Carl Heneghan of Oxford University and Anders Tegnell, the epidemiologist behind the Swedish laissez-faire approach to pandemic. (When OpenDemocracy requested details of Tegnell’s communication with the prime minister’s office, he was told that any release could harm government policy-making.)
The omnipotence of contrarian voices on Covid played into Boris Johnson’s tendency to go unnoticed. As anyone who wants to influence the prime minister knows, when he is involved in a number of options, he often does nothing. The delay in imposing restrictions in England following the September meeting with Tegnell and co resulted in an estimated 1.3m additional Covid diseases.
The astronomy surrounding the Swedish model – and herd protection – sets the stage for Britain to reduce restrictions faster than scientists, or even the public, wanted. We were even offered a financial incentive to spread the only thing we have ever known of the virus: internal mixing. The image of a fearless Rishi Sunak serving food in Wagamama in London to a “eat out to help out” campaign in August has not grown well. (Research shows that the scheme has directly contributed to the rise of disease.)
Sunak is part of the growing libertarian movement among Conservative MPs, many of whom have strongly opposed renewed lockout measures. Lockdown suspects have also received financial support: the much-debated ones The publication of Great Barrington, which advocated herd protection, was coordinated by a U.S. think tank that has received funding from the Koch billionaire brothers, pumping large sums into the Republican party and the fringe.
All of this has shaped Britain’s pandemic response. Opposing pressure from locking skeptics in the media and within his own party, Johnson left, time and time again. When the prime minister’s chief scientists urged more restrictions in December, the prime minister’s transport secretary Grant Shapps was announcing a £ 3m bus scheme for people to visit their family at Christmas. Less than a week later, most of England went into level 4. At the same time, lockout suspects are still picking up data to show that Covid is covered in too much, even as hospital cases escalate to new highs.
The British government is now facing 2021 with the Covid disease level that the health secretary admits is out of control, but with many of his own MPs strongly opposed to further restrictions. Perhaps we should not wait for the historians’ judgment before asking ourselves whether it is a good idea to allow a handful of pundits, thinktanks and backbenchers to draw such a pull on British public life?
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Peter Geoghegan is the research editor of OpenDemocracy. His book, Democracy for Sale, is published in an updated newspaper on January 7th