The history of crisis – and what it tells us about coronavirus

Some crises overwhelm everything: they make each controversy that went before them seem very small indeed, and they draw a line in the calendar between ‘Before’ and ‘After’. We could well be living through one of these fundamental historical breakpoints right now. So much in the future will be at least coloured by this spring and early summer: health care, housing, welfare systems, travel and tourism, economic policy. You name it, things are moving.

Governments everywhere have had to scramble in the dust as history blasts past them. Few administrations have emerged with a vast amount of credit. The Chinese Communist Party lost precious, vital days trying to shut down a story it treated like a bug to crush. The reaction of the Trump administration has been something between a very bleak farce and a tragedy: the President’s attempt to play down the outbreak for so long has definitely cost lives.

Here in the UK, Whitehall and Westminster have only really woken up to what is before them in the last two weeks. Boris Johnson’s government, looking fairly popular and pretty secure even as late as Budget Day last week, has been made to look flat-footed at best and blundering at worst – though the very latest polling shows they still enjoy widespread public confidence, at least for now. Though we can safely ignore the hyper-connected ramblings of the Very Online Left, raging that the Tories want to kill off Britain’s elderly – these hashtag bullies seem less and less relevant to anything as each hour passes – the Government certainly has not covered itself in glory.

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