Boris Johnson must take back control...if he can – Bernard Ingham

First government in a democracy is messy business at the best of times, let alone during a pandemic, and, second, there is and possibly never will be cast-iron protection against coronavirus in all its varieties.

This being so, we have, as Franklin D Roosevelt put it during his 1933 inaugural address, nothing to fear but fear itself since it would be a drag on our economic recovery.

Let’s deal with fallible government first.

It may come as a surprise to many that the very concept of Cabinet government, with the Prime Minister first among equals, is a recipe for a public relations disaster.

How do you control a system based on freedom of expression and dispersal of power?

As No 10 press secretary, I had no authority over my information colleagues in government departments. They owed their first loyalty to their Cabinet Minister. I could rely only on power of persuasion.

No wonder when Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson entered No 10 they decided this loose system was not calculated to help them make the media supporters rather than endless critics.

So they centralised and steadily rid themselves of anyone in press offices they felt unreliable.

At the end of Tony Blair’s first term, only one senior information official they inherited remained in post. It was an unprecedented clear out in the name of control and the system still bears the scars.

Yet even then it did not work because they were up against personal ambition in the land of the greasy pole and genuine differences of view, approach and dogma.

I seem to remember that the era of Blair/Brown control was as untidy as Margaret Thatcher’s 11 years dogged by Wets v Dries, Europhiles v Eurosceptics and the overweening conceit of Chancellor Lawson.

This is not to overlook the “Bananaskin years”, as I christened much of her second administration, after her landslide return in 1983. Only Arthur Scargill rivalled the Government’s ability to step on them and he came a real cropper.

It is not my blind loyalty, as some would put it, to a Tory government that counsels caution over judging Boris’s handling of coronavirus.

It is my 11 years before the mast of one of our more effective past-war governments.

Having said that, quarantining visitors to the UK for the first time from Monday, assuming it is operated, is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted to no purpose whatsoever except to delay economic recovery on which the health of the most vulnerable ultimately depends.

I suspect that Boris is either still struggling with the after-effects of the coronavirus that left him in intensive care or, perhaps for that reason, taking too much notice of the scientists and too little of political reality. We await his plan for getting the country going.

This brings me to the other reality: the need to recognise there is and may never be absolute protection from coronavirus any more than there is from flu.

My automatic inoculation every autumn did not prevent me getting double pneumonia in 2014.

Yet Government action and advice have got a disease we first heard of less than five months ago under some control, and that this will steadily become tighter as reliable testing and tracing develops.

We also know that children are relatively immune compared with old has-beens like me with chronic breathing difficulties.

Common sense tells me to be very careful indeed.

It should also tell politicking local authorities – sadly a lot of them in Yorkshire – and teachers’ unions to cut it out and do their duty by future generations by getting them back in class.

Their action looks ludicrous in the light of the recent invasion by furloughed parents and their children of our beaches where social distancing was gone with the wind.

In short, self-isolation is slowly breaking down of its own accord.

The Government, perhaps too cautiously, is trying to ease it, relying on the public’s common sense while warning that restrictions may have to be imposed if the infection rate rises.

The moral of my story is that governing a democracy is easy until you try your hand at it.

No Government since 1939 has had to handle a more formidable global crisis threatening our health, wealth and relatively advanced way of life for years to come.

It is the easiest thing in the world to criticise, especially central government.

It is much harder to face inconvenient facts and accept personal responsibility for the common good.

Editor’s note: first and foremost - and rarely have I written down these words with more sincerity - I hope this finds you well.

Almost certainly you are here because you value the quality and the integrity of the journalism produced by The Yorkshire Post’s journalists - almost all of which live alongside you in Yorkshire, spending the wages they earn with Yorkshire businesses - who last year took this title to the industry watchdog’s Most Trusted Newspaper in Britain accolade.

And that is why I must make an urgent request of you: as advertising revenue declines, your support becomes evermore crucial to the maintenance of the journalistic standards expected of The Yorkshire Post. If you can, safely, please buy a paper or take up a subscription. We want to continue to make you proud of Yorkshire’s National Newspaper but we are going to need your help.

Postal subscription copies can be ordered by calling 0330 4030066 or by emailing [email protected]. Vouchers, to be exchanged at retail sales outlets - our newsagents need you, too - can be subscribed to by contacting subscriptions on 0330 1235950 or by visiting www.localsubsplus.co.uk where you should select The Yorkshire Post from the list of titles available.

If you want to help right now, download our tablet app from the App / Play Stores. Every contribution you make helps to provide this county with the best regional journalism in the country.

Sincerely. Thank you.

James Mitchinson

Editor