Like a bolt of lightning, the coronavirus has lit up the world in which we really live. The nation-state has proved to be the only institution with the power and authority to deal with the pandemic and shield its citizens from the dangers of an increasingly chaotic world.
The ever-increasing international co-operation of which our liberal elites have talked for so long is nowhere to be seen. The European Union is closer to break-up than it has ever been, with Italy raging at being left in the lurch by Brussels and Berlin.
Our utter folly of depending on China has been highlighted as millions of testing kits the UK Government ordered have turned out to be faulty on arrival.
The World Health Organisation has been slow and faltering, giving Chinese statistics of the spread and containment of the virus a credibility that does not square with the censorship and cover-ups that Beijing has imposed.
Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus attends a news conference on the situation of the coronavirus
Faced with an emergency the like of which has not been seen for generations, global organisations have proved to be unreliable. And the idea of globalisation peddled by elite opinion-formers and influencers has been exposed as unrealistic.
A global free market was coming into being, they told us. National borders were fading away and, where they still existed, stood for nothing but racism. Nations themselves – those of Western countries, at any rate – were grubby relics of an imperial past.
But it is international institutions that are now failing and nation-states that are responding effectively to the emergency. In the EU, national borders have been reinstated and free movement shut down. The chronically flawed single currency is coming under desperate strain. The inherent divisions are more exposed than ever.
Rich northern European nations such as Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Finland have been resisting the large-scale financial aid southern Europe needs if it is to come out from the economic shutdown with its societies and political systems intact. And it was only when Italy was driven to threaten to leave the bloc that Brussels agreed a £470 billion bailout fund on Thursday.
MEANWHILE, the northern nations are continuing to block the creation of ‘corona bonds’, a more permanent solution that would share the economic burden of the pandemic throughout the EU. Such a scheme, they pontificate, would pose ‘moral hazard’ – in other words, Italy would waste the money.
In the lengthy history of EU inertia and conceit, this must be the most thoroughly stupid stance ever adopted by European leaders. Day after day, European institutions are showing themselves to be unequal to the challenge. After only three months as head of the European Research Council, Professor Mauro Ferrari – the top European scientist and until now a fervent supporter of the EU – has resigned in protest against the European Commission’s wholly inadequate response to what he described as ‘a tragedy of possibly unprecedented proportions’.
Any idea of European solidarity is dead, and with it the idea of supra-national government. In a major crisis such as this, the EU is simply not fit for purpose.
Eurogroup President Mario Centeno giving a press briefing. Centeno in a video message appealed to EU finance ministers to agree to a financial plan to shield the EU economies in response to the threat of Corronavirus
Meanwhile, authoritarian states have been using the pandemic to expand their influence. China and Russia have been sending Italy and other countries well-publicised consignments of medical equipment. The masks China has sent have been rejected by some countries as useless, but China’s propaganda campaign rolls on anyway. Russian aid has been minuscule in size, but that, too, is working well in PR terms.
The fact that Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China are acting decisively while Western countries dither and squabble is hugely symbolic. The virus is cruelly ending tens of thousands of lives in countries across the globe. At the same time, it is killing a view of the world that has ruled the minds of liberal elites for a generation.
As it threw off Communism, Russia was expected to become a Western-style democracy. As it became richer, China was supposed to become more open and free. Both would become part of a ‘liberal world order’ led by the West. The opposite has happened. Xi has made himself president for life, and Putin has done much the same by extending his presidency to 2036, when he would be 84. Authoritarian states are advancing, while Western democracies cling to utopian fantasies of unprecedented global cooperation.
The countries of the EU are not immune from the worldwide shift to authoritarianism. Invoking the threat of the virus, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has used his large majority in parliament to impose emergency powers that allow him to ‘rule by decree’ indefinitely. So far, Hungary is nothing like as repressive as Russia or China. But the fact remains that something not far from a dictatorial regime exists within the sacred precincts of the EU. The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has issued a bland statement condemning authoritarianism in general terms, but without even mentioning Hungary by name. Here, too, the EU is practically powerless.
With so much evidence that trans-national institutions are failing, you might think that our chattering classes would reconsider their faith in the ‘liberal world order’. Plainly, a situation in which we depend on any single country for essential medical supplies (such as pharmaceutical ingredients) is untenable.
Allowing China a pivotal role in critical parts of our national infrastructure such as telecommunications is at best questionable.
Putting so much trust in a state that has allowed the reopening of the barbaric ‘wet markets’ – where endangered wildlife is sold to be eaten, and which seem to have played a critical role in the spread of the virus – is unwise, to put it mildly.
Equally clearly, whatever missteps it may have made – on early mass testing for the virus, for example – the British response to the pandemic has been incomparably more co-ordinated and far-reaching than anything the EU has managed to achieve.
Held together by the monarchy and a long, shared history, Britain’s four nations have been able to act together in this moment of trial and danger.
The countries of the EU are not immune from the worldwide shift to authoritarianism
Europe’s nation states, meanwhile, are going their separate ways. If the EU survives, it will be a shadowy entity without substance or power.
Countries that have been betrayed and abandoned – Italy, Spain and before them Greece – will increasingly turn to China or Russia for support.
Yet even now, it seems that some of our liberal opinion-formers have learnt nothing. Instead, there are increasing murmurs of the need for a ‘government of national unity’ now that Boris Johnson is receiving hospital treatment.
There can be no doubt that the sooner the Prime Minister is back in Downing Street, the better. But those who are whispering of a coalition are not interested in effective government. Clearly, their goal is to divert the Government from the course it has promised voters it will follow.
The key supporter of Labour’s plan for a second EU referendum, Sir Keir Starmer, was as much the architect of his party’s disastrous showing in the General Election as Jeremy Corbyn. A ‘national unity’ Government would allow Starmer into Downing Street without the tiresome and uncertain inconvenience of another Election. The inevitable result would be unceasing pressure to draw Britain back into the floundering European institutions that have proved so feeble in dealing with the virus.
As it forges a new future, Britain must be resolute and ruthlessly realistic.
Nostalgia for an imaginary liberal order is pointless and dangerous. If the virus has done anything of value, it has shown us the true nature of the world in which Britain must find its way.