The Failure of the Elite (2): The Priorities of the Elite
- lisaluger
- Jan 18, 2022
- 15 min read
Updated: Mar 21
To understand the extent of incompetence, one must understand the elite’s character traits as a social stratum, a class, and a status in society. The priorities of the elite differ, and so does their understanding of democracy.
When the Covid pandemic began, Boris Johnson was otherwise occupied. Instead of his seat of Government in Downing Street, he was staying with his fiancée, Carrie Symonds, at the Prime Minister’s official country residence, Chequers, where he was preparing for his divorce and writing his book on Shakespeare.
He skipped five weekly meetings of the crisis team Cobra (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) and delegated all Covid-related duties to Matt Hancock, his health minister.
Scientists’ warnings of a pandemic fell on deaf ears, and the Government ignored urgent calls from the National Health Service (NHS) to order PPE masks and gowns. Unfortunately, these failures in February 2020 may have cost the lives of thousands of people in the UK.
Source: The Times, 19 April 2020: Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh
The Government did not cover up the dangers, as was the case in China, but underestimated or ignored them for a long time. Private, personal matters of the prime minister had priority. Such an attitude is somewhat reminiscent of a phenomenon known from pubescents who have a problem with giving reason and duty priority over the principle of pleasure. However, one expects different behaviour from a prime minister.
This attitude could also explain the Government’s laissez-faire attitude towards mass sporting events such as the Cheltenham Racing Festival in mid-March 2020. Despite rising Covid infections and hospitalisations, the famous horse race, which attracts about 250,000 visitors every year, was not cancelled. SAGE (Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies), the committee of scientists who advise the Prime Minister and Cabinet in crises, was also apparently unaware of the potential risk of infection at mass events, despite simultaneous debates in other countries, and remained ambivalent in its advice.
Horse racing is the biggest sporting event after football in the UK and generates millions in tax revenue each year. The organisers expected that the 250,000 visitors would spend around £100 million on the city’s hotels, restaurants, bars and clubs. The cancellation of the Cheltenham Horse Racing Festival would have been very costly and highly unpopular. Racing has mighty patrons, including the Queen, politicians and people in business.
The event is also known for networking. It provides opportunities to initiate lucrative business deals in an informal atmosphere. Thus networking is an indispensable prerequisite for obtaining money and power and for maintaining it.
One of the Jockey Club directors is Baroness Dido Harding, wife of Tory MP John Penrose. She is a close friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron, who arranged for her to become a member of the English House of Lords in 2014. She is also close friends with the keen horseman and racing enthusiast, Health Secretary Matt Hancock. Shortly afterwards, he appointed Dido Harding as director of the Covid testing and tracking programme, which, with a £22 billion budget, is a crucial part of the Government’s response to Covid.
Over these three days (10 – 13 March 2020) of the Cheltenham Festival, the elite was networking and opening doors for future projects.
The scenario was different for others; for example, a waitress who later recalled in an interview that she was terrified of catching Covid in the crowded bar. However, she had no chance to protect herself because social distancing and mandatory masks did not yet exist and not working was not an option.
NHS data analysis of the impact of the Cheltenham Festival and the two simultaneous major football matches in Manchester and Liverpool showed that together they had caused over 100 deaths, 500 hospitalisations and 17,000 infections.
Faced with criticism, the Government and Health Secretary Matt Hancock later unanimously justified their decisions by saying they had been guided by scientific advice.
”Wash your hands for as long as it takes to sing ‘Happy birthday to you‘ twice”
At this time, countries like China, South Korea, and most of our European neighbours discussed far-reaching restrictions to contain the spread of the virus. The British Prime Minister’s message was: ”Wash your hands for as long as it takes to sing ‘Happy birthday to you‘ twice”. This message is a relatively trivial way of dealing with a pandemic that would cause nearly 150,000 deaths in the UK (by the time of writing in late October 2021).
Equally worrying, the scientific advisors initially suggested herd immunity as a strategy, and the Government briefly found this option acceptable.
The emergence of herd immunity means that most of the population develops antibodies through infection with the virus and thus becomes immune. According to the prime minister’s calculation, the economic damage would not be too significant since only older people over 80 would be affected.
When there was neither a vaccine nor medication against this unknown disease, such a strategy was reckless, unrealistic and irresponsible.
Shying away from responsibility
In times of crisis like the Corona pandemic, a responsible government must strike a balance between individual liberties and human rights, such as the physical and mental integrity of the entire population.
For Boris Johnson, socialised in the upper class, however, the principle of personal freedom has traditionally been a precious asset worthy of protection, outshining all else.
In the pandemic, however, it has become apparent that personal freedom is quite different.
While some people do have the choice not to go to the pub, restaurant, supermarket or use public transport for the sake of their health, others, such as waiters, shop assistants, bus drivers, supermarket staff, etc., cannot choose; to mention a few examples.
Therefore, in my view, it was simply irresponsible how lax the reaction was initially to the study by Prof. Neil Ferguson of Imperial College. This study predicted that more than half a million people in the UK would die from the Covid disease without interventions.
This data prompted Boris Johnson to make a “radical recommendation” in a TV address on the same day, 16 March 2020. He recommended that people should, if possible, work from home and avoid places like pubs and restaurants. While the Bavarian Prime Minister, for example, declared a state of emergency and ordered closures, border controls and exit restrictions, the Prime Minister could only bring himself to make a recommendation for the time being. This recommendation only meant that nothing was legally binding. So the before mentioned waiter in the pub had the personal freedom to choose between health risks or destruction of livelihood. In the imaginary world of an elitist socialised Boris Johnson, such alternatives do not occur.
Of course, the prime minister and his Government also looked beyond Britain to Europe. There, they were preparing for a strict lockdown. The dangers for the United Kingdom were obvious and would have required quick and decisive action.
Instead of taking responsibility for unpopular and difficult-to-implement measures and communicating the need for them, people were left to their own devices. Legally regulated financial support was not in the Government’s focus. However, financial aid is of existential importance for many people who work and live as wage earners or as self-employed.
Later, ministers and scientists justified their hesitation by saying they thought the population would not accept drastic measures. They simply completely misjudged the needs of the people, whose living conditions they only rudimentarily know. However, history showed that exceptional times justify exceptional actions and are accepted by the population as long as they appear necessary, proportionate, practical and reasonable and are limited to the foreseeable future.
When the UK did impose the lockdown a week later, on 23 March 2020, there were already 12,648 confirmed cases of Covid and more than 1,000 deaths. It was evident that the virus was out of control. This data forced the Government to react. Unfortunately, it had missed the moment when it could have acted.
The Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, contracted Covid and his severe illness revealed how unaware the ruling elite are of its responsibility for the entire country.
While Boris Johnson was fighting for his life in hospital, Foreign Minister Dominic Raab was temporarily in charge of government business. But Raab only governed on a consensus basis with the cabinet's approval. So it was unclear what powers he had to make crucial decisions, such as imposing more drastic measures or developing and implementing an exit strategy from the lockdown.
No matter how small, there is usually a well-trained, entrusted and empowered deputy in any business, but not so in the Government of the United Kingdom. So, in all seriousness, a government in the middle of a pandemic was not capable of acting because the prime minister was ill. What if he had died?! The question is whether this clique of friends and former schoolmates is even aware of their responsibility for an entire country!
What do these people want? Positions? Power? Business? Winning? Image? Peerage?
More recently, in early October 2021, Boris Johnson faced demands to urgently tackle the growing crisis in the country: Price increases, tax rises, fuel shortages, labour shortages, and supply chain crisis, a problem last seen in the 1970s and now experienced by many British citizens and businesses as a “side effect” of Brexit. The Prime Minister rejected all responsibility and dismissed the current “pressures” as side effects of the country’s post-Covid economic recovery. Boris Johnson, in all seriousness, told business leaders who expected the Government to take action to solve problems that it was not his job to “solve every problem in the economy”. He urged business leaders to simply pay their employees more to absorb the rising cost of living and make jobs more attractive to domestic workers, as there was no way to issue thousands of short-term visas to foreign workers.
Angry business leaders then accused Boris Johnson of simply passing the buck after dismissing and denying their fears of rising inflation and disrupted supply chains. They said the country was in crisis and the Prime Minister refused to acknowledge this and do anything about it.
To escape the challenges posed by business bosses and the precarious supply situation in the short term, Boris Johnson retreated with his family to the luxurious villa of his friend and minister Lord Goldsmith on the Costa del Sol. This break was already the second holiday in four weeks. The Prime Minister’s subordinates stayed behind to administer the crisis because solutions would be the responsibility of an elected government. Chancellor Rishi Sunak, for whatever reason, was also not available for government business at this time.
The steel industry chief, who feared that the lights might go out in the UK within 4 to 6 weeks, did not consider it appropriate for the prime minister to take a holiday in such a situation.
Soon the unravelling of the Government’s irresponsibility in handling the pandemic became public.
On 12 October 2021, a comprehensive and damning report compiled by MPs on two cross-party committees (health and social affairs and science and technology) sharply criticised how the Government had handled the pandemic from the outset. The report said it was one of the biggest public health failures the UK has ever experienced. The delays and mistakes made by ministers and scientific advisers in the early stages of the pandemic cost at least 20,000 lives.
Source: https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/7496/documents/78687/default/; https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/mps-uk-covid-report-lockdown-herd-immunity_uk_61645a08e4b019644427c7ae
Cabinet member Steve Barcley, however, repeatedly refused to apologise for the Government’s failure during interviews. Even though he had not read the report, he dismissed any blame. He insisted that the Government followed scientific advice, protected the NHS and made decisions based on available evidence. The newly appointed science minister, George Freeman, even went so far as to blame Covid victims for a severe course of the disease because they were overweight. He was scapegoating people who perhaps have a metabolic disorder for the Government’s inaction at the pandemic’s beginning.
Source: Metro 13.10.2021 Covid Verdict: It’s your fault. Sorry? Fat chance. It is insulting to blame Covid victims and their families.
When someone takes office in a government, they get responsibilities with the power. One is responsible for success and failure because one has made decisions. These decisions include which experts to consult and what to do with the advice and opinions. Instead of blindly following the suggestions of scientific experts, the Government representative must carefully consider the results in context. Otherwise, experts might as well take over the Government for a while! Advisors and scientists can never take away the responsibility of governing from the elected members of the Government. However, in the current make-up of the Government by representatives of the elite, this principle seems to be unknown.
Profile orientation instead of task orientation
I presume that the elite are very concerned about their image, focusing primarily on media effectiveness. Therefore, decisions are made based on whether they can be portrayed in a particularly effective way in the media and not whether they are practical and efficient measures. Spectacular things produce spectacular coverage. That’s how it works.
An excellent example of this is the construction of the Nightingale Hospitals.
As early as the end of March 2020, intensive care units across the country were already overcrowded. The public health system reached its limits very early on due to the steadily reduced capacity caused by constant cuts in the previous ten years of the Tory Government. Without admitting past mistakes, a spectacular solution was needed.
The army was deployed and built within nine days a gigantic hospital in the O2 Congress Centre in London. The Government praised itself for this Herculean achievement and commissioned the construction of similarly gigantic hospitals. The danger of overburdening the health system will thus be averted, they promised.
However, what the Government overlooked, which is typical of this Government, was that the appropriate specialist staff was unavailable. Shortage of skilled workers! A well-known phenomenon in the industry had apparently not filtered through to the Government. It was impossible to move highly professional critical care staff out of hard-pressed hospitals to maintain safe staffing ratios. As a result, for example, only a handful of patients could be treated at the new Nightingale Hospital in London over the Easter weekend of 2020, when record numbers of critically ill Covid patients were admitted to London hospitals. In total, 51 patients were treated at this Nightingale hospital, with a capacity of 4,000 intensive care beds, before it was converted into a Covid vaccination centre.
Source: https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1860. Covid-19: Nightingale hospitals set to shut down after seeing few patients.
But you’ve had your media hype, and the public really doesn’t look that closely for so long.
Politicians had distinguished themselves, but the task of protecting the health system had not been fulfilled. In the months that followed, six more Nightingale hospitals were built across the country, at a total cost of over £220 million and with a capacity of over 11,000 intensive care beds. But, again, they could hardly be used for said reasons. Since then, four of these hospitals have been closed down; three are threatened with closure but will continue to be used at least as vaccination or diagnostic centres for the time being.
The closure of these Nightingale hospitals, some of which have yet to admit a single Covid patient, raises two questions:
Has the pandemic response disproportionately focused on developing intensive care capacities?
How did the decision to embark on such an expensive profiling project come about without even a politician, scientist or healthcare expert having pointed out the problem of shortages of skilled workers? Or perhaps hints from the practice were ignored in order not to jeopardise the prestige project?
In any case, task orientation, which one may expect from representatives of the people, looks different. When solving a complex task, it is generally known that it is essential to include diverse perspectives and levels, which means the expertise of practitioners is also needed.
However, Boris Johnson and his cabinet, marked by a sense of class and know-it-allism, kept amongst themselves. They consulted the scientists of the SAGE group but neither asked people with long-standing practical experience in the health sector for advice nor did they look across borders to Europe. Instead, they made ill-conceived decisions and demanded their execution.
This approach appears to be a pattern. Decisions fail in the face of reality because politicians from the elite seem not to value practitioners and their expertise; hence, they do not involve people working at the grassroots level in the decision-making process. Consequently, protests from the people who should implement these wrong, not far-reaching enough or unimplementable measures regularly led to urgently needed revisions. This ineffective way of working is probably based on the assumption that practitioners are more or less recipients of orders with whom one does not cooperate at eye level.
The elite’s understanding of democracy – Jovi and Bovi
In a democracy, all people have the same rights and obligations. Yet elites are people who are used to influencing social decisions, i.e. exercising social power. The tension between elites and democracy and what elites thought of the principle of equality became evident in the Corona crisis.
Whoever makes the laws somehow seems to be strangely above the law, loosely based on the Latin mentioned above saying,
“What is allowed for Jupiter is not allowed for the ox”.
This scandalous elitist self-concept of inequality is evident in handling the regulations restricting freedom of movement and contact restrictions.
Let’s take the example of Dominic Cummings, a close advisor to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
Dominic Cummings – the exception to the rule!
In March 2020, when he feared that he and his family had contracted Covid like the Prime Minister, he travelled with his wife and child from London to Durham (268 miles, 431 km, 5 hours driving time) to be nearer his family in the event of illness. He was spotted in the following days, apparently not ill, on an outing with his wife and child near Durham Castle.
The directive to the rest of the population was to stay at home under all circumstances. Thus, not only did people have to endure loneliness and isolation, but they could not see their loved ones in nursing homes and even visit seriously ill and dying relatives or friends in hospitals. This was a tough time for many, whilst a government advisor made life easier for himself. Why? Because he could!
The Durham police considered his behaviour as only a minor offence. The Prime Minister, with his cabinet and the Government’s scientific advisors, gave Cummings full backing. Original sound bite: “What Cummings did, any responsible family man would have done.”
Excuse me? What? An outcry went around the country at this gross violation of the lockdown rules. So the government advisor who does not abide by the curfew is a responsible family man, and the ordinary citizen who does the same is sanctioned?!
This episode ultimately undermined the binding nature of the Government’s lockdown rules and caused significant damage to the pandemic.
Source: Dominic Cummings potentially broke lockdown rules, say Durham police. The Guardian, 28 May 2020.
Matt Hancock – everyone is the same except me!
Completely absurd is the story of Health Minister Matt Hancock, which happened in May 2021. He had been secretly filmed in his office (the footage was sent to and published by the Sun newspaper) hugging and kissing his assistant.
That his long-standing affair with his closest aide was made public is one thing, but that he breached his own ban on contact with people from another household is another. It becomes tragic-comic when one considers how Hancock had handled the resignation of Prof Ferguson, who was guilty of similar misconduct. He had called for the latter’s resignation because, after all, the contact restrictions and rules of distancing would apply to everyone. However, not to himself.
This offence probably would not necessarily have led to his resignation if other political disputes had not fuelled this scandal. For a long time, Boris Johnson had covered for his health minister, even when he came under intense attack from Dominic Cummings (after his departure as a special adviser) for his failed policies during the pandemic. But in the end, the Government probably needed a scapegoat for its mismanagement of the Covid crisis. Thus, the timing of the scandal was favourable to the Government and unfavourable to Hancock.
Prof. Ferguson – My mistake, my consequences!
Unlike Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings, Matt Hancock and other ruling elite members, Prof. Ferguson did not think that his breach of the rules weighed less than those of ordinary citizens.
Someone observed and made it public that he had received visits from his mistress when one had to stay strictly at home and avoid any contact with members of other households. He immediately admitted his misconduct and instantly resigned from his position as Scientific Advisor on the SAGE Committee. His integrity and expertise remained unaffected by this misdemeanour, and the media regularly approached him for comment. People usually forgive if someone admits a mistake and takes the consequences. After all, we are all human beings.
Source: Prof Neil Ferguson quits Government after ‘undermining’ lockdown. BBC 6 May 2020.
After all these scandals, the public was sensitised to the ruling elite’s sense of inequality “what is permitted to the Jupiter is not permitted to the ox”. Therefore, misdemeanours had to be covered up from then on.
Fake pilot projects to bypass quarantine rules
In July 2021, the law was that anyone warned by the Covid app that they had been in contact with an infected person would have to go into quarantine. With the simultaneous removal of restrictions, this rule led to significant problems in everyday life and sometimes partially paralysed the economy. For example, sometimes, it was no longer possible to operate all tube lines regularly because too many employees were in quarantine. Therefore, removing the lockdown restrictions and, at the same time, maintaining strict quarantine rules is more akin to a foolish act than a well-thought-out measure.
The situation became even more absurd when government officials were among those affected. They reached deep into their bag of tricks.
When the newly appointed Health Minister Sajid Javid tested positive for Corona in his first week in office in July 2021, Downing Street announced that Cabinet members who had come into close contact with him would not have to isolate themselves as required. The reason given was that they would participate in a VIP pilot programme with daily tests. These individuals included Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak.
This argument had worked months earlier with government member Michael Gove when he returned from the Champions League final in Portugal with his son and did not have to go into what was supposed to be mandatory quarantine like everyone else. Yet, it did not work this time. The opposition and the public had learned their lesson and resented this brazen behaviour. The politicians concerned complied.
A small step forward to equality before the law? Or “What is not permitted to the ox is not permitted to Jupiter” or something like that.
Source: Covid-19: PM and chancellor self-isolate after rapid U-turn. BBC, 19 July 2021.
Source: Polly Toynbee, Mon 19 July 2021, The Guardian: Boris Johnson’s ‘freedom day’ isolation tells us the virus is everywhere.
Further analyses
In other articles, I deal with other phenomena that came to light during the crisis.
(LL.)
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