COVID-19 UK Political Analysis by Tim Hames – 11th September 2020

The mood shift in Whitehall in little more than a week is striking. At the beginning of this month, despite the various difficulties that ministers at the Department of Education had endured, there was a strong sense that in the public health sphere, and exerting control over the coronavirus while futher opening the economy and society, real progress had been made, especially when the UK was compared to continental Europe. These facts were set out in an FTI Analysis of two weeks ago. There was also strong if very private confidence that the Oxford/AstraZenica vaccine was also taking huge strides forward.

That sense of confidence, of Whitehall exercising more control over events in this crisis, may alas have proved at least partly misplaced. In the space of a few hours over Tuesday evening it emerged that the evidence of a substantial increase in the cases of infection which might prove sustained in character was compelling. This in turn would mean that quite draconian new rules on the numbers of people who could meet inside or outside households within England would be imposed. At almost the exact same moment it was also revealed that the trials of the Oxford vaccine had been paused for an unknown period of time because one participant in the phase three trials in the UK had fallen ill and exactly why had not yet been substantiated. On all fronts, this is clearly a serious setback at the very minimum. Whether it is more severe than that will soon emerge.