If war is politics by other means, what does that make our war on COVID-19? That’s right. It makes it politics. And the sooner we face up to it, the better our politics will be.
The first essential step is to resist the natural temptation to think of the pandemic as an apolitical crisis, into which politics should not intrude. There’s politics and politics.
Some politics is purely exploitative. Around Europe, the far right is insisting that the pandemic confirms its xenophobic suspicions of open borders and foreigners. Matteo Salvini of Italy, Marine Le Pen of France, Viktor Orban of Hungary – to name just three – haven’t missed a beat.
But then there’s the political perspective that sees the health crisis as a lens which enlarges our view of more permanent features of inequality and inequity in our society. Not all of us will be hit equally. Not by the virus itself, nor by the measures taken against it.
Much attention is currently on the hospitality and retail sectors. But the informal economy (such as domestic help, self-employed technicians and handymen) is also being affected. We have yet to see to what extent the lowest-income households can make use of distance schooling, for example, or whether the pandemic will exacerbate longer-term socio-economic inequality.
Technocratic decisions never affect us all equally. They inevitably prioritise some interests over others. That’s the essence of politics, from taxation to subsidies to welfare.
Once we’re clear-eyed that the politics is inevitable, we can try and make the best of it. Two issues are salient: authority and the sequence of events.
Authority, first. In a populist age, the authority of expertise is making a comeback. The most successful politicians are those seen as following the advice of the scientists in the immediate-term. The authority of the gut and popular feeling is, so far, in recession.
Disruptors like Donald Trump, whose reputation is built on hyperbole and gut instincts, are being damaged. Long-time establishment conformists, like the Democratic front runner Joe Biden, are now seen as reassuringly attractive (and not just the moderate candidate to support by default, as he was a mere two weeks ago).
We will be emerging from the pandemic only to face international interrogation of our institutions and trustworthiness
No one illustrates the dynamic of the game better than Boris Johnson, the British prime minister. Having won power as an iconoclastic disruptor, he has quickly shifted political shape and adopted a more serious political persona, ready to listen to experts he was quite ready to scoff at over Brexit.
But the politics is not just about how knowledge is trumping charisma. It is also about the sequence of events – from just prior to the pandemic to what we should expect once we emerge from it.
Singapore, for example, was not acting on expert advice when it took rapid steps to shut the border with China, despite the economic cost. At that moment, the World Health Organisation was not advising it. It was a political decision, taken on the basis of Singapore’s previous experience with a pandemic.
The politics is also visible in Europe and the US. Is Trump being racist in calling COVID-19 the China virus? He’s certainly pandering to racism. But he’s also using the health crisis to pave the way for a deepening of the economic conflict with China.
It’s something he’s wanted and he’s not wasting this crisis. Not least since, if the pandemic lasts till August, he will only have two months of political campaigning before the presidential election.
It’s not just Trump. Angela Merkel has long been presiding over a slowing German economy, with her political party losing ground to extremists on the right. She is now broaching the possibility of bending German rules on deficit spending to stimulate the economy.
The justification for the exceptional spending is the exceptional health crisis. But it also happens to be something that enables Merkel to do what she would have wanted to do anyway. And not a moment too soon. Campaigning for Germany’s federal elections would begin soon after the pandemic is expected to abate.
What does this tell us about the politics of the pandemic? That politicians are using the new-found authority given to handle the health crisis to legitimise other exceptional steps to address the resulting economic crisis. And a number of them also have looming general elections on their mind.
These are not just a string of individual cases. Together they shape the world in which Malta must address its own health and economic crisis.
Once more, authority and sequence are salient. We will come out of the health crisis with a damaged economy. But we are experiencing this health crisis as part of a sequence of other crises, which between them have greatly damaged our international reputation.
We need a good reputation – for probity, security, clean administration and public safety – for the economic recovery to be as smooth as possible. But we will be emerging from the pandemic only to face international interrogation of our institutions and trustworthiness.
We will have little authority to counter it. Meanwhile, our rivals for international investment would have added clout, as a result of the pandemic, to underline the dangers of ‘contagion’ of their financial systems.
As always, they will do it because they’re convinced it’s right and because what’s right happens to suit their interests.
It would be nice if our government could be given the slack to focus all its energies on the pandemic and leave good governance and reputation for later. But we can’t separate the problems so neatly. European politics won’t let us.