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Did we really ‘take back control’? Britain's poor pandemic response proves Brexit remains an unrealised vision

Where's the political vision? Jack Hill/Pool/AFP/Getty


June 21, 2021   5 mins

When Britain finally withdrew from the European Union on 31 January 2020, thousands of Brexiteers congregated in central London to mark our belated national secession from the continental bloc. Less than two months later, on 23 March 2020, Britain went into its first national lockdown, in which — among other curbs on civil liberties — public gatherings of more than two people were made illegal.

It was a striking reversal. For many of its partisans, Brexit had been cast in terms of restoring freedoms — freedoms that had allegedly been lost to an overbearing European superstate, whose pettifogging bureaucrats had tied the nation up in red tape, and whose arrogant judges trampled over ancient liberties with new-fangled human rights. The winning slogan of the Vote Leave campaign — “Take back control” — spoke to this sense of political disempowerment and drift, and offered the tantalising prospect of granting people more sway over their own lives.

Yet within weeks of leaving the EU, Britain endured the most drastic restrictions on national freedoms seen in peacetime. How was it that the promise of greater freedoms was so quickly dashed? How was it that a democratic bid for greater popular power ended up so powerless? Could the cycle of lockdowns enacted since March 2020 snuff out the gains of Brexit?

Britain was, of course, far from being the only country to enter lockdown. For supporters of the EU, the global pandemic was a salutary reminder of the realities of global interdependence, puncturing the nationalistic conceit that a country could choose its own fate. Yet the cycle of lockdowns since March 2020, as well as the Government’s shambolic response to the pandemic, reveals more about the failures of British politics than it offers moral fables about global interdependence.

It wasn’t Remainer revanchists in the People’s Vote campaign and the Liberal Democrats who put the nation under house arrest, but a British government elected to enact Brexit. It was a Conservative government, widely castigated for its allegedly crude populism, that palmed off its authority on to a technocratic body, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), to oversee lockdown. What this tells us is that the impulse to curb civil society and to rule through unelected institutions on the basis of technocratic authority is not an imported problem. The authority of Sage revealed that the EU was not a foreign imposition, but that it grew out of problems that were deeply embedded in the relations between British state and society.

Three national lockdowns later, it is easy to forget just how exceptional Brexit was. It represented the first secession from the EU, an organisation that had hitherto only ever expanded to absorb more states. It was the first major EU referendum that was neither ignored (as had happened with the French and Dutch referendums of 2005 and Greek referendum of 2015), nor put to another vote (as happened in Ireland in 2008). It was the first sustained democratic revolt against the new free trade blocs that were explicitly designed to make economic policy impervious to popular will. It was the only popular revolt that came in the wake of the great financial crash of 2008 that made any lasting impact.

All the great populist revolts between 2008 and 2020 have variously been defeated at the ballot box, surrendered to their opponents or battered themselves into oblivion: Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Donald Trump in the US. Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral insurrection collapsed in less than two years — notably, after Corbyn conceded to the prospect of a second referendum. In France and Italy, the populist Right — Marine Le Pen and Matteo Salvini — have both retreated from talk of quitting the EU or abandoning the euro.

All this makes the fact of Britain’s successful secession from the EU the more remarkable. In Britain, Brexit was repeatedly vindicated at the ballot box over the course of the general election of 2017, the European parliamentary elections of 2019 and the general election of 2019. Yet by March 2020 Britain’s democratic exceptionalism appeared to have evaporated overnight.

Despite these putative democratic gains, the British government’s response to the pandemic clearly revealed a state that was unable to harness popular power or convert democratic legitimacy to effectively overcome the coronavirus pandemic. Instead, Britain tumbled into the authoritarian pattern of lockdowns, the global precedent for which was set by the Chinese Communist Party: individual isolation, social distancing, rigid restrictions on public life and civil liberties.

Deeming itself as inessential as any other middle-class office job, parliament dissolved itself, even as it promulgated draconian legislation against its own citizens. Throughout the pandemic, the British state has consistently treated its citizens as a threat to each other, rather than as agents whose collective capacities could be mobilised against the virus.

The immediate response of civil society early last year, which saw spontaneous neighbourhood and county networks springing up to organise services and food delivery to those who were isolating and vulnerable, indicated strong impulses to collective self-help and social solidarity. Yet the Government was unable to use such unifying impulses to mount a collective response to the pandemic, instead enacting restrictions on collective life more severe than those in wartime. The 600,000-strong NHS volunteer army that rapidly emerged in early 2020 petered out, as the state did not have the wherewithal to deploy it.

This ultimately revealed the incapacity of the Tory government and British state to convert popular will and social solidarity into enhanced state capacity to tackle the pandemic. This enhanced capacity could have been used not only to support the self-isolating and vulnerable with extra social services, but also to expand public health capacity — for instance, expanding support services, deploying extra cleaning staff in hospitals and expanding the administrative capacity of the NHS.

The more recent recruitment of vaccine volunteers this year provides an insight into what an effective mobilisation of the public may have looked like early on in the pandemic. But with furlough, lockdown and stay-at-home orders, national demobilisation and public passivity was the order of the day — and indeed, it turned out to be amenable to many of the middle classes.

Lockdown, then, was ultimately an artefact of a lack of state capacity. It was justified, after all, by the need to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed. This reflected the reality of an underfunded public health system and a state run on “lean” just-in-time principles, as if it were a supermarket serving customers rather than a public body serving its citizens. With the NHS having become dependent on sucking up medical professionals from abroad instead of expanding its training capacity, when the pandemic struck there were fewer medics that could be released from their training early to supplement front-line medical staff, while none could be absorbed. The British state was so market-efficient that it notoriously did not even have a surplus of functioning personal protective equipment.

Yet despite all this, state capacity is not a purely technical affair — to do with the number of public employees, their training, the efficiency of government procedures and institutions — but is also a question of legitimacy and authority. Indeed, without legitimacy and authority, public capacity is meaningless.

The EU is designed precisely to create this kind of hollowed-out state — not only as a result of ECJ rulings and its collective treaty commitments to neoliberalism and austerity, but more importantly because it is designed to make states impervious to popular will and democratic choice by embedding them in supranational institutions. The failures of the British state throughout the pandemic show that even as we have formally seceded from the EU, Britain remains to all intents and purposes a member-state.

That is to say, the British state remains not only authoritarian and brittle, it is also incapable of expanding state capacity by converting popular will into government action. The most important limits confronting the British state are not to be found in its borrowing capacity or fiscal rectitude, or its capacity to cut trade deals beyond Brussels, but in its relationship with its own citizens.

Five years since the Brexit referendum, and two years since the end of the transition period, Brexit remains in some fundamental ways, an unrealised vision — a promise of greater self-government, of national renewal, of popular autonomy. As the Government prolongs public restrictions and state technocrats pore over plans to normalise the bio-security state, the promise of taking back control seems as remote a prospect as ever.

Yet despite decades of atomisation, the early popular response to the pandemic — especially visible in the communal self-help networks — indicate that there is a deep impulse for social solidarity and collective empowerment. The only thing that’s lacking? Political vision.


Philip Cunliffe is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London. He is author or editor of eight books, as well as a co-author of Taking Control: Sovereignty and Democracy After Brexit (2023). He is one of the hosts of the Bungacast podcast.

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Peter LR
Peter LR
3 years ago

Errr, how long is a piece of string; how long does it take to reorient after divorce from a 47 year marriage; how long does it take to turn a tanker round; how long does it take to reverse out of a compromised protocol dead end?
I don’t think anyone thinks our politicians are particularly good. But then look at some of the pandemic heroes. Why isn’t Kate Bingham PM? Presumably because she likes to work anonymously rather than have every word and action scrutinised by cynical or maliciously motivated media hacks. Why would any competent person want to subject themselves to public vitriol? Isn’t it interesting how all the deliberate lies and smears against Trump are now coming out and how it appears that Biden’s shortcomings are being ignored. I would like to think we deserve better leaders but am not surprised if our best people head for industry or entrepreneurship.
“ the reality of an underfunded public health system”: should read ‘the reality of a poorly designed public health system’.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 years ago

It’s interesting to think about how (if at all) Brexit and the pandemic response relate to one another. I’ve often found myself wondering over the past year whether Brexit was fired up and driven by a belief that the basis of the British social contract was the fabled freedom of yore (on an individual and national level). The pandemic and the lockdown may have served to show us that that is no longer the case, or that that belief isn’t anywhere near as widely held as previously thought. The yearning for a more active state and top-down approach which we have witnessed in recent times may have been a result of our long sojourn in the EU which adopts a similar approach. Or maybe the British have just been too comfortable and too wealthy for too long and now think that individual freedom and responsibility sound like too much hard work. It’s hard to tell and we’ll be discussing this for years to come.
I take questions like “Have we really taken back control?” with a pinch of salt and tend to see it through the lens of the self-employment journey. There comes the day when you find yourself walking out of the office for the last time, saying bye-bye to colleagues (and your regular pay packet) and thinking “here goes!” You sit down on the first full day with it all to do and it’s intimidating. There might well be a plan – but rarely do things go to it – quite often you end up at some completely different destination. You start out thinking “I’m brilliant at X and terrible at Y”…only to discover that you’re actually not much cop at X at all but much better at Y than you thought…and brilliant at A, B and C! So you end up making your money off of them instead. And possibly the most important thing: there will be failures, so learn to deal with it. Sort through the wreckage, take whatever learnings there are and then move on. Dwelling is the enemy of all forward progress.
All these articles on “this isn’t what we were promised” and “this doesn’t look like control” put me in mind of a kid sitting in the back seat of the car saying “are we nearly there yet?” No, we’re not, love. You just have to focus on the challenge at hand. Maintain optimism, an open mind and a sense of adventure – and keep on moving forward.

Last edited 3 years ago by Katharine Eyre
JulieT Boddington
JulieT Boddington
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Do you write ‘Positive Thinking’ books for a living?

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 years ago

No I’m just self-employed and have learned by bitter experience that when I wallow in negativity, I don’t get stuff done, my business does not run well and I don’t earn enough. It’s that simple.

Last edited 3 years ago by Katharine Eyre
David Simpson
David Simpson
3 years ago

I hope that was a joke.

JR Stoker
JR Stoker
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Excellent!

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Boris took a sort of thriving business and by exceptional, and relentless, BAD choices and decisions, and dithering, delegating it to the utterly wrong idiots, bankrupted it, pillaged the pensions, sold off all the equipment and facilities, got involved in huge law suites, and got all the employees fired.

He did not find he is poor at X so achieved things by doing Y, he was terrible at X and then tried Y, and he was WORSE at that!

I am self employed, most of my life, and Boris caused Far more harm than if the nation had elected a sock puppet who did nothing but sat in the sock drawer for the whole year. He was a Disaster! When you needed Florence Nightingale you got Typhoid Mary.

Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago

A rather strange and meandering article that seems to suggest that failings in the Pandemic response were due to the U.K. having left the efficient EU.
No meaningful evidence is provided to support this rather tenuous proposition from someone who clearly dislikes the current government.
Brexit allowed us to take back control of borders, laws and money – which we have done.
There is no relation between Brexit and Coronavirus

Last edited 3 years ago by Ian Barton
James Chater
James Chater
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

T

Last edited 3 years ago by James Chater
Will R
Will R
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Absolutely right – academics confusing two quite unconnected events

Oliver Johnson
Oliver Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

“A rather strange and meandering article that seems to suggest that failings in the Pandemic response were due to the U.K. having left the efficient EU.”
On the contrary, the article is making the point that our leaving the INefficent EU should have resulted in a better pandemic response, one that made good use of the people of this country to supplement state capacity, rather than just letting the Government do everything themselves with an ‘underfunded’ (in my opinion, badly run) NHS. The author of the article even has a direct dig at the EU here:

“The EU is designed precisely to create this kind of hollowed-out state — not only as a result of ECJ rulings and its collective treaty commitments to neoliberalism and austerity, but more importantly because it is designed to make states impervious to popular will and democratic choice by embedding them in supranational institutions.”

The popular will amongst the people of this country to help one another – expressed via communal help networks and strong take up of the NHS help app – was thus squandered due to the government being too aligned with an inefficient EU impervious to popular will:

The failures of the British state throughout the pandemic show that even as we have formally seceded from the EU, Britain remains to all intents and purposes a member-state.

However, like Peter LR states in a comment above, how long does it take to reorient after a divorce from a 47 year marriage?

Last edited 3 years ago by Oliver Johnson
Ian Barton
Ian Barton
3 years ago
Reply to  Oliver Johnson

It’s a shame these points were often drowned out with anti-government rhetoric …
Not helped by the “Brexit 5 years on” header …

Last edited 3 years ago by Ian Barton
Oliver Johnson
Oliver Johnson
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

Isn’t an article criticising the government not going to contain anti-government rhetoric?

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
Reply to  Ian Barton

“seems to suggest that failings in the Pandemic response were due to the U.K. having left the efficient EU.”

What a strange reply to the meandering article which did not say that at all – it said there was no net change as the dithering Boris gov ignoring the people was no different to the dithering EU ignoring the people.

It then went all academic Liberal/correct with the obligatory dig at Trump, “All the great populist revolts between 2008 and 2020 have variously been defeated at the ballot box, surrendered to their opponents or battered themselves into oblivion: Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, Donald Trump in the US.”
None of which is true of Trump, who at the extreme end lost by a mere 35,000 votes in a couple – winner takes all – cities, in – winner takes all – States, thus getting the delegates. and the reality (truth) only had Biden win by pure vote harvesting via Democrat postal vote shenanigans. Trump continues as a virtual neck-in-neck competitor, and 2022 mid-terms will show how this race runs.

Anyway, the whole sneering tone of the article exactly conveys the current state of politics, if this is how ‘senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent.’ writes of the covid/Brexit 2020 the nation is done. Snarky, point scoring, denigrating, defeatist…
I personally think Boris should be in the Tower, and wish some of these Political academics would try to give answers and solutions rather than winging.

Andrew D
Andrew D
3 years ago

In the next election we can punish this government for its handling of lockdown, should we choose to. How will citizens of the EU punish the EU?

Alan Thorpe
Alan Thorpe
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

The problem is that when we punish a government we always get something worse.

Katharine Eyre
Katharine Eyre
3 years ago
Reply to  Andrew D

I guess that there will be the same old song and dance coming up to the next European Parliament elections as in 2019 with citizens being told there will definitely be “more democracy” and “no more backroom deals” this time, oh yes for sure…only for Dolly Buster to be appointed as Head of the Commission as part of some dodgy deal between Macron, Draghi and Viktor Orban. I think Dolly’d do a better job than vdL to be honest.

David Simpson
David Simpson
3 years ago
Reply to  Katharine Eyre

Hardly a challenge

A Spetzari
A Spetzari
3 years ago

Philip might be right with how voting to leave the EU doesn’t chime with accepting lockdowns- but only because he is looking at it through the lens of his own political philosophy, which most people don’t vote off of.
Furthermore one was a culmination of years and years. Say what you like but the UK gave being in the EU a good go over many years, but after time the majority of the public decided enough was enough. The vote also had long term implications, deep into the future.
By contrast the pandemic has been shorter and sharper. Yes people have surrendered liberties, but the general belief is that it is for the short term until the pandemic is under control.
Now this may drag on and might not come to pass as we wish, but then we may start to see the sort of resistance that Philip thinks is missing.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago
Reply to  A Spetzari

The other thing to remember is that Brexit was and remains deeply contested. Very many people, of all political hues, are not on board and are pretty much unreconcileable. This is not necessarily something that much can be done about, short of coercion. Chairman Mao Zedong might have a solution for this type of situation, but I’m doubtful homogeneous social solidarity can be imposed from on high in free societies. The aftermath of Brexit is bound to remain messy for years. Nevertheless, I’m personally convinced the schism is permanent. There is no going back into the clutches of the EU (notwithstanding the hopes of many), and from here, the UK will keep diverging as the years roll on.

ps: good god, just realised how much I sound like a committed minor Soviet apparatchik circa 1930, justifying the revolution, in this response.

Peter Branagan
Peter Branagan
3 years ago
Reply to  Prashant Kotak

Mr Kotak, fortunately Covid did much to change the underlying demographics of the Brexit issue. A large swath of Brexit supporters have now gone to their eternal reward.
The majority of young people in Britain support the EU. The remaining supporters of Brexit on a smallish island off the coast of Europe are rapidly approaching their dotage and continue to wallow in ignorance of what the EU actually is – as distinct from what they think it is – while always desperately stoking up ever more hatred of all the citizens in the neighbouring countries.

And PLEASE loads and loads of those lovely red down tics. The more down tics I get on Unherd the more sure I am that my views on the EU and Brexiters are well founded.

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter Branagan

You will get no red downtick from me – I very rarely downvote anyone, people are free to believe whatever they choose. I do however find your characterising as ‘fortunate’ the demise of those Brexit supporters who have gone on to join the great kipper in the sky to be a tad ghoulish. Still, each to their own neuroses, and it seems the remainer mutation is rather vicious. Also, I am doubtful a hundred thousand fewer Brexiteers will aid your cause much – you will need to somehow organise for a larger cull – and good luck with.

Last edited 3 years ago by Prashant Kotak
Norman Powers
Norman Powers
3 years ago
Reply to  Peter Branagan

I downvoted you because rejoicing in people’s deaths is ugly and twisted. It doesn’t imply anything about you being correct and you shouldn’t interpret it otherwise.

Rasmus Fogh
Rasmus Fogh
3 years ago

Some interesting points here, not least about ‘isolating economic policy from popular will’. But the writer misses a fairly important point: There is a real virus out there; it is killing people; and cutting down on social contacts is the one way to keep that virus from spreading. There is something post-modernist about the way Mr. Cunliffe ignores the real world and see the enitre pandemic simply as a problem of political theory.

Fennie Strange
Fennie Strange
3 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Thank you RF – this is the response I was planning to write but now I don’t need to.

Norman Powers
Norman Powers
3 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

Cutting down on social contacts hasn’t had any effect on the virus. This is now extremely clear. Last year there was only Sweden for most of the year to prove this but now Texas and Florida are better examples. Lockdowns, masks and social distancing all have no effect and it’s visible when entire US states abandoned these measures overnight with zero impact on case numbers.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
Reply to  Rasmus Fogh

“There is a real virus out there; it is killing people; and cutting down on social contacts is the one way to keep that virus from spreading.”
There are fatty and sugary foods out there and they are killing people, and not eating them is the one way to stop them from killing us.

So lets Ban THEM! Lets close all except vegan restaurants, lets get everyone on diets, lets empty the shelves of anything not pure, lets bankrupt the nation doing this. Lets stop EVERYONE, thin and fat, old and young, fit and unfit, from eating FAT AND SUGAR! Save everyone, make them live forever, F personal freedom. Most of the ones dieing from covid had comorbidity, diabetes, heart, weight, and so on from their eating unhealthy foods. Lets Stop That!!!!!! Ban Them!

Ri Bradach
Ri Bradach
3 years ago

The ridiculous premise at the outset of this article seems to be that if Britain had not voted for Brexit, there would not have been lockdowns.

It goes on to say that the “follow the science” approach means that an allegiance to technocracy hasn’t departed with the European Commission.

Quite apart from the evidence that it was a desire on the part of the government not to lock down that led to many sensible polices being ignored.

Why for example, did we continue to have international travel from China? Why were airports and ports open at all except to allow expats to return, and then under strict quarantine? Had these measures been taken people living on islands like the UK and Ireland would not now be enduring lockdowns. Take a look at the Isle of Man, Jersey for examples.

Was it a technocratic desire to control people that led to such decisions? Clearly not.

There is a place for questioning why lockdowns continue, but it isn’t an isolated point and the writer utterly fails to apply logic or reason to his soapbox diatribe.

Last edited 3 years ago by Ri Bradach
Tom Watson
Tom Watson
3 years ago
Reply to  Ri Bradach

Don’t know where you find that premise. As far as I can tell he’s lamenting what a shame it is to have finally left the EU, only to immediately default to precisely the same policies that suggest themselves to the Eurocrat mindset the second a crisis emerges (which explains many of the cockups made throughout the process).
Shut down international travel? Quelle horreur, viruses know no borders! Put the entire country under house arrest so hospital throughput remains within acceptable parameters? Mais oui, There Is No Alternative!

Antony Hirst
Antony Hirst
3 years ago

It looks to me like we walked out of the EU and straight into the clutches of the WEF.

Galeti Tavas
Galeti Tavas
3 years ago
Reply to  Antony Hirst

But the EU is in their clutches too.

James Chater
James Chater
3 years ago

I

Last edited 3 years ago by James Chater
Simon Coulthard
Simon Coulthard
3 years ago

Quite a few times necessary digs at the middle class there. Overall a good article, though I imagine UnHerd commentators will be critical because it dares to objectively analyse post Brexit Britain

Prashant Kotak
Prashant Kotak
3 years ago

You are aware that the author is a committed Brexiteer, albeit from the left?

T Doyle
T Doyle
3 years ago

I don’t think the article is attacking Brexit. It’s attacking problems inherently unique to these islands. The failure of the establishment to defend the country. An establishment too scared to impose travel bans for fear of being racist. We are doomed.