Post-Corona: a world beyond all recognition

Coronavirus has rightly taken over the news agenda. Last week I observed that by now, nobody will be giving much thought to Brexit save for the nerds and the cranks on both sides. As with much else in politics, people have a hard time letting go of obsolete paradigms. It's quite understandable. One day you can have a near total command of the issues and the next day everything you know is suddenly irrelevant.

As regards to Brexit, since most normal operations have gone on standby and trade as we know it has all but collapsed, with regulatory compliance going on the backburner for the time being, one wonders if there will be any noticeable difference should we leave the transition without a deal (Inter arma einem silent leges).

Ultimately there is zero mileage in talking about trade governance when it looks like we are about to descend into anarchy. Systems are only as good as the capacity to enforce them. Even if we do crash out without a deal, nobody has the intellectual or physical resource available to police the Northern Ireland protocol for starters, and preserving the customs and regulatory integrity of either territory is a distant concern when saving lives is the priority. 

Certainly an airline services agreement seems somewhat redundant since most flights are suspended and half the airlines may even go under - and afterwards flying may be an expensive luxury. It may well be that in any case we will have to rebuild our trade relationships from scratch, taking into account the new landscape when the dust settles. All the while there is a danger that supply chains, particularly groceries and pharmaceuticals may collapse. We are likely to a face a shortage of logistics and manpower. Panic buying is not helping either. 

At the moment any talk around Brexit seems like an indulgence when it now looks like our worst fears may come true. While we are looking at Italy as the predictor of the epidemic, there are other indicators from Italy that suggests the UK may struggle to maintain order. The mayor of Palermo told Sky News that crime gangs are exploiting people's hardship and inciting violence - he warns a social emergency is next. Governments may have set aside funding but getting it where it needs to be is another matter entirely. Meanwhile the NHS is currently showing signs of maximum strain. 

Bodies are piling up in the resuscitation area. The hospital mortuary is clearly struggling to cope. Now we are also running out of surgical gowns. Some nurses are wearing bin bags instead, which is horrifying to see. Admin is struggling to keep up with the death rates. An oncologist calls the ward to touch base with one of their patients, only to discover they died from Covid-19 days before. The collateral damage of this virus for normal patients will stay with us for a while.

This comes as the government has given up the ghost on containment through test and trace, and is betting the farm on delay by way of tightening up the lockdown. Additional hospital capacity looks as though it will be rapidly overrun and in all likelihood will add little value. We're about three or four weeks away from a full spectrum civil emergency.

This leaves many unanswered questions about the lockdown. Already the police are having to walk a fine line where measured enforcement gives way to draconian jobsworth policing, meeting widespread criticism, but at the same time we are seeing some crass and selfish behaviours that make tighter controls an inevitability.

Further questions arise when we see a double standard emerging. The police are only too happy to issue fines and fixed penalty notices to those going for solitary walks in the country, but there are whole districts of immigrant communities who are seemingly ignoring the lockdown entirely without consequence. Videos are spreading across social media with little corroboration or acknowledgement from the established media, but if they are authentic then we are seeing parts of our cities where the writ of government simply doesn't run, where the virus will spread like wildfire.

The police are then faced with the choice of either doing nothing, setting up roadblocks to blockade entire districts, or going in heavy handed. Since the latter is out of the question, we probably are looking at Croydon style looting disorder but with no obvious end in sight. If then supplies can't get where they need to go without being intercepted by criminal gangs, we may see Tesco vans with armoured escorts.

A week ago some were telling me I was exaggerating and overreacting but as with no deal Brexit, supply chains are fragile, as is civil society. We can hold the line if basic cultural norms are observed but in our multicultural cities there is no such thing as a cultural norm. Unless the police can hold the line then we will likely see vigilante groups emerging.

It's the same the world over. We saw this in Iraq. The moment allied forces lost the capacity to keep the peace, militias emerged to take over the role of government. Meanwhile drug gangs in Brazil have already imposed their own curfew on the slums of Rio. If government can't govern, someone else will. Power is ultimately in the hands of the group with the monopoly on violence.

Any discussion in respect of our external relations now largely pertains to matter of security and vital supplies. It hits home how modern FTAs are largely a luxury indulgence of civilised wealthy nations. Talk about level playing fields, competition, climate and intellectual property are all completely redundant now. Intergovernmental cooperation still matters but it cannot be bound by the letter of the law of treaties when lives hang in the balance.

As to the politics, this administration enjoys a great deal of public support if the latest polling is anything to go by, but we are not yet at the point where people are being turned away from hospitals - which could very well be the start of the political implosition. With clinicians running short on PPE despite reassurances from ranking public officials, and with unanswered questions over the government's earlier handling of the outbreak, coupled with a breakdown of law and order, the public mood could turn on a dime.

I don't know how bad this is going to get but it will test the state and public resilience to the max. Britain stands a better chance than most of emerging relatively intact, but if this runs much beyond summer and there is a second wave as winter approaches when the cupboards are bare, all bets are off. A country used to a level of affluence and liberty is not one that is going to keep a lockdown discipline for any prolonged period. Eventually we're all going to have to come out and face the music.

At a point where we can scarcely plan for next week, let alone a major overhaul of our relationship with the EU, where events are undoing the best of our intentions, all of our petty squabbles from before look farcical. It was only three years ago to the day that Theresa May signed the letter triggering Article 50. Nobody predicted we would be where we were just before Corona and absolutely nobody was prepared for this. To then impose the politics of yesteryear on a rapidly evolving situation is futile. Neither the UK nor the EU will ever be the same again. This is make or break for both fragile unions.

In respect of the EU, it will be judged on its largely irrelevant role in responding to Corona. The most useful thing it can do for any member states right now is to simply waive its own rules and get out of the way. Its bread and butter daily trifles are of no real urgency and may never be resumed. Schengen is likely dead, customs borders may be back for good. Freedom of movement may also be dead. Eastern European states can't afford to lose their brightest and best and there may not even be work for them elsewhere. Every single one of the core assumptions of the EU now comes into question and with member states needing to take their own unilateral actions the single market may no longer function at all.

Following Corona there we be a renewed questions over what member states expect the EU to do and it will be measured against what it realistically can do. With the Visegrad states diverging politically, with democracy seemingly going on the backburner, with some even facing collapse, the EU may need to reinvent as a provisional administration for the weaker states. All the while, the richer states are not going to be told what they can and can't do while rebuilding a new normal. Those now clamouring for the UK tor rejoin the EU simply have no concept of what form the EU will take when this is all over. There will have to be a new treaty but only after Europe decides once and for all if it can even be sustained.

The smart thing for the UK to do right now is to extend the transition indefinitely if only to buy us options on the flip side. At least inside the current framework there is the option of a deal, but if we close that window it is not so easily reopened. European nations may well decide they don't want a zero tariff agreement. Globalisation est mort. The FTA as we know it could well be dead.

For now the EU is focussed on PR, using its limited resources to ingratiate itself with its supporters, making a big show of its joint procurement programme, and its supporters don't seem to ask or even care if it can actually deliver - or whether national efforts are any better or worse. But mostly the EU is on lockdown, where running normal business over video conferences without the army or interpreters and translators simply isn't possible. Therein lies the fundamental flaw and overall inadequacy of the EU. It's appropriate for large scale long term collaboration, but it simply cannot perform the role of a nation state. It doesn't have the resource, the power or the legitimacy - and never will.

When it comes down to it there is no such thing as a "citizen of Europe". Whatever it says on your passport, when it comes to surviving in a crisis like this, it's community, communication and commonality that matters. We may share certain values and ambitions with Europe, but when it comes to the crunch the manufactured apparatus of the EU cannot compete with the pedigree and legitimacy of the nation state. The European utopian ideal is dead. A new era calls for a new vision and new institutions with a new sense of purpose. Something the dead hand of bureaucracy can never provide.

Corona rewrites the script of everything. As much as anything, in a global crisis, we cannot afford our traditional euro-parochialism. As remarked previously "the world is only as strong as the weakest health system". Going forward, everything we do has to be looked at through a biosecurity prism, and the UK cannot afford to self-isolate internationally. We have to be hands-on globally to control new outbreaks and that requires full engagement and these themes must inform our trade, security, welfare and industrial policies. 

As we count the cost of our complacency and continental hubris, the structures and institutions of yore will neither be appropriate nor politically desirable. In most respects, Corona gives us a blank slate far beyond what we imagined by leaving the EU and it's useless to pretend things can stay the same. On the other side of this disaster we are faced with a world beyond all recognition. We need shake off our redundant thinking if we are to meet the many challenges.