Post-virus everything is going to change. That’s the dominant view of national and international media. But how exactly do they see the future? This regular digest section gives some of their answers and views/Edited by George Hamilton
In this edition:
- Two thoughtful articles, one in The Times, the other in the Guardian, both agree about the enormity and the speed of change post-virus. Winners: China, populist leaders. Losers: US (both say “Suez moment”), Europe, globalisation. All themes echoed recently by other commentators.
- Could a WW2 crystal ball help Britain through this crisis?
- Oh, oh Brexit again: The EU HQ is (almost) a Zoom-free zone. Result: UK/EU December talks deadline is “fantasy”
- ..and the linked UK/US trade deal is also on ice.
- And finally: in good times and bad the rich do things differently. Think mega yachts, converted nuclear bunkers (with swimming pool)
How coronavirus will change the world for ever
Catherine Philip, Diplomatic Correspondent: This too shall pass. The curve will flatten. Humanity will survive. But already the coronavirus outbreak is taking on the shape of a once-in-a-generation watershed. As cities, states and nations scramble to outpace the disease, choices made or rushed through now may alter the shape of the world for decades to come.
The early signs point to changes that may have already been under way, a retreat from globalisation and a resurrection of the nation state as governments scramble, like hoarders in a global supermarket, to make sure that their own households are stocked.
Frontiers effectively erased in Europe have once again slammed shut, even as the southern countries worst affected cry out for a Marshall Plan from the northern industrial giants with whom they share a market and a currency. The leaders of Israel and Hungary have seized for themselves powers almost unthinkable in a democracy, sweeping aside the authority of parliament, the courts and elections. Will they ever give them back?
Emergencies “fast-forward historical processes”, says the historian and philosopher Yuval Noah Harari. “Decisions that in normal times could take years of deliberation are passed in a matter of hours.”
The author Robert Kaplan adds: “Crises like wars put history on fast forward. And history is now on fast forward.” So just weeks into the pandemic, are we witnessing the shape of the world to come?
The globe faces “an unbelievably unlucky moment in that we have the first US president since the war, maybe even longer, who is not interested in American leadership”, Anne Applebaum, the author and historian, says.
Global orders have a tendency to change gradually at first then all at once, suggesting that the virus could be a “Suez” moment for the US, marking its decline as a world power.
Beijing’s ability to respond was helped because it was already the leading manufacturer of the masks, respirators and ventilators that the world needs to fight the virus.
The US, by contrast, has discovered that its own stocks were only a tiny percentage of what was now needed at home, much less give away abroad.
The former foreign secretary, Lord Hague of Richmond, predicted that China would emerge from the crisis ever more powerful, with a swiftly rebounding economy and added, chillingly, that Beijing would “gain from the new age of the surveillance state that will be summoned into existence in the coming months”.
Washington is also waking up to uncomfortable statistics, such as China’s 95 per cent share of the US market in antibiotics, drugs needed to fight secondary infections from the coronavirus. The pandemic, warns Robin Niblett, of Chatham House in London, could be “the straw that breaks the back of economic globalisation”. Stephen Walt, of Harvard University, fears that it will bring about a world that is “less open, less prosperous and less free”.
The future of Europe: Coming hard on the heels of Brexit, the pandemic has shaken the foundations of the European Union. Prosperous states such as Germany and the Netherlands responded slowly to pleas for help from Italy and Spain, the first southern states to be stricken by the virus.
In Hungary Viktor Orban’s seizure of extraordinary emergency power raises questions about the limits to which the union can stretch. His move to rule by decree, without recourse to parliament, the courts or elections, has barely raised a murmur in a preoccupied Brussels.
Global Britain Malcolm Chalmers, of the Royal United Services Institute, counsels that the pandemic “will generate a new debate about whether we are giving enough priority to homeland security,” which could even include new consideration of the diversity of our supply chains and a greater need for national self-reliance.
The economy: Britain will bear the scars of the outbreak for years.
“The sheer cost of the crisis is going to result in a lot more debt, so we are going to have to tax people more. In the end this has to be paid for,” Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, the Treasury’s former top civil servant, says.
For the young, after a decade of lost wage growth and a housing market that remains out of reach, this may be seen as one economic betrayal too far. As Lord King of Lothbury, the former Bank of England governor, warned, many of them will say: “Why on earth is our future being put at stake to help prolong the life expectancy of older people?”
The death of cash: The coronavirus pandemic has seen the use of cash halve amid concerns that banknotes could spread the virus. But 1.3 million British adults have no bank account, mostly the poor and elderly, and they are at risk of being marginalised in a cashless society.
Home working: The pandemic has brought an explosion in home working for those who are able to do it. Companies are learning what the benefits might be in reduced overheads, as are workers, grateful to avoid grinding commutes. A shift to more home working could spell trouble for the businesses serving the needs of office workers, from sandwich shops to newsagents.
Radical solutions: Crises spur radical solutions. Spain has suggested one: universal basic income, under which all existing social security benefits are replaced with a flat-rate payment for all, without means testing. The idea that underpins it is that a modest income, which can be supplemented by work, reduces reliance on other benefits.
Daniel Susskind, the economist and author of A World Without Work, said he had previously approached the notion of UBI “from a position of scepticism” but “the arrival of coronavirus has changed my attitude”. The Times 10 Apr
Coronavirus: who will be winners and losers in new world order?
Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic Editor: World leaders, diplomats and geopolitical analysts know they are living through epoch-making times and have one eye on the daily combat, the other on what this crisis will bequeath the world. Competing ideologies, power blocs, leaders and systems of social cohesion are being stress-tested in the court of world opinion.
The discussion in global thinktanks rages, not about cooperation, but whether the Chinese or the US will emerge as leaders of the post-coronavirus world.
In Britain…there is not yet much discussion of a new politics. Perhaps the nation, exhausted by Brexit, cannot cope with more introspection and upheaval.
The Crisis Group thinktank, in assessing how the virus will permanently change international politics, suggests: “For now we can discern two competing narratives gaining currency – one in which the lesson is that countries ought to come together to better defeat Covid-19, and one in which the lesson is that countries need to stand apart in order to better protect themselves from it.”
Many are already claiming that the east has won this war of competing narratives. The South Korean philosopher Byung-Chul Han, in an influential essay in El País, has predicted: “China will now be able to sell its digital police state as a model of success against the pandemic. China will display the superiority of its system even more proudly.”
Indeed, China is already on a victory lap of sorts, believing it has deftly repositioned itself from the culprit to the world’s saviour.
The Harvard international relations theorist Stephen Walt thinks China may succeed. Offering a first take to Foreign Policy magazine, he suggests: “Coronavirus will accelerate the shift of power and influence from west to east.”
But South Korea, an export-oriented economy, also faces long-term difficulties if the pandemic forces the west, as Prof Joseph Stiglitz predicts, into a total reassessment of the global supply chain. He argues the pandemic has revealed the drawbacks of concentrating production of medical supplies. As a result, just-in-time imports will go down and production of domestically sourced goods will go up. South Korea may gain kudos, but lose markets.
The loser at the moment risks being the EU…with the EU discourse so far dominated by an unedifying and highly technical row about how to fund the EU’s economic rescue.
Europe’s chief solace is to look across the Atlantic and watch the daily chaos that is Donald Trump’s evening press conference – the daily reminder that rational people can plan for anything, except an irrational president. Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to Josep Borrell, the EU foreign affairs chief, wonders whether, much like the 1956 Suez crisis symbolised the ultimate decay of the UK’s global power, coronavirus could mark the “Suez moment” for the US. Guardian 11 Apr
What kind of Britain will emerge from the crisis?
Peter Kellner: In January 1941 the editors of Picture Post, a popular weekly magazine, did something bold, risky and, with hindsight, brilliant. They decided that the bleakness of the present made it all the more important to reimagine the future. They devoted a whole issue not to the war but to what kind of society we should have once the war was over.
A National Health Service, decent pensions, social insurance for all, decent schools, full employment, new towns: in 40 pages of popular journalism, the magazine proposed “A Plan for Britain” which anticipated post-war Britain in almost every particular.
Our current crisis poses the same challenge and presents the same opportunity.
A modern-day version of the Picture Post of 1941, then, would be just as concerned with the future role of the state; but it would have to avoid ideological simplicities.
It’s absurd to claim that the public sector is better than the private sector or vice versa. We need both, just as the profit motive is a useful spur in some parts of our society but not others. The challenge is to combine public purpose and private enterprise — not to trade one against the other but to promote both. This needs hard thinking more than slick slogans.
All that is, or ought to be, a statement of the bleeding obvious. But the same could be said of Picture Post’s “Plan for Britain”. It recycled ideas and arguments that had been debated through the 1930s, especially on the Left. It’s not that the magazine said anything dramatically new, but that it thought big. It seized the moment to create a manifesto that was clear, compelling and comprehensive. In Britain’s darkest hour it offered hope.
Today the need for hope is much the same, and the political prize there for the taking — as it was for Clement Attlee. The Article 9 Apr
Brexit: UK plan to agree trade deal by December is fantasy, says EU
Boris Johnson’s plan to seal a deal with Brussels on the future relationship with the UK by the end of December has been described as “fantasy land” by EU officials
The European council headquarters, where member states’ positions are coordinated, is only able to hold one daily video conference due to a lack of facilities. The capacity to carry out work is 25% of what it would usually be.
An EU official said while the European commission, which is in charge of talks with the UK, had better facilities for remote negotiation, it would be impossible for the member states to have the same input through the EU council. This would make a successful negotiation nearly impossible. Guardian 8 Apr
No quick deal: UK/US trade talks postponed indefinitely
Negotiations on a UK-US free trade deal have been postponed indefinitely due to the coronavirus crisis, raising fresh doubts about whether an agreement can be struck before Donald Trump faces re-election in November.
Formal talks were due to start in the week beginning March 23. There is no new date agreed for a restart
The delay has created new pressure on an already tight timeline, with the UK hoping for a “comprehensive” trade deal agreed before Mr Trump faces the US public in the presidential election that is less than seven months away.
One of the most senior Democrats in Congress, House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi, has adopted a cooler stance to talks, threatening to vote down any agreement that undermines the Northern Ireland peace settlement.
Other complications are looming. Next summer, the US president loses the power to negotiate trade deals, known as the Trade Promotion Authority, and will need it to be re-approved by Congress.
There is no guarantee that will happen, whoever is president at that point, with long delays common in the past.. Daily Telegraph 9 Apr
In good times, and in bad, the super rich do things differently
At the turn of the year, as the coronavirus pandemic started to wreak havoc across the globe, nowhere was safe. Well, nearly nowhere. Some 50 owners of super yachts found themselves conveniently moored in the pristine waters of the Caribbean, self-isolating in style.
Even before the Covid-19 pandemic swept the earth, its wealthiest citizens were devising new ways to protect themselves against future Armageddon. An entire industry has sprung up around creating bolt-holes safe from war, disease, climate emergency or whatever fresh nightmare is next heading our way. And even in the wake of global meltdown, still guaranteeing the levels of luxury to which some have grown accustomed.
In the rolling hills of central Kansas, property developer Larry Hall has been building a complex of so-called ‘survival condos’ on the site of a decommissioned Cold War nuclear bunker, originally engineered to withstand a five kilotonne nuclear warhead detonated within a half mile.
Among the current owners of his condos, Hall includes ‘business leaders and billionaires’. Shared facilities include a climbing wall, 75ft indoor pool, cinema, games room and indoor shooting range. The bunker is also equipped with its own hydroponics and aquaculture to grow enough food to be self-sufficient, and is connected to two deep wells capable of producing 10,000 gallons of drinking water a day
The complex uses ‘a set of military grade air filters’ which Hall blithely states can screen out Covid-19. “They filter every known pathogen to man,” he says, “including things like nerve gas and viruses and bacteria and all that.”
“The super rich are going to be the most insulated in terms of money buying you freedom,” says Anthony Lassman, director of London-based firm Nota Bene, which arranges super luxury travel and the acquisition of ultra-prime real estate. When it comes to rising above Armageddon, he says, “you can always find a way if you have the means to do so.” Daily Telegraph 10 Apr
