Andrew Street outlines four reasons why it is apt that the temporary hospitals set up in response to COVID-19 are named after nursing pioneer Florence Nightingale. He explains how some of the key challenges currently facing UK healthcare professionals are similar to those Nightingale had to deal with.

It is fitting that the exhibition and convention centres rapidly equipped in the UK to house those suffering coronavirus are named Nightingale hospitals. This year marks the 200^th anniversary of Florence Nightingale´s birth on 12 May 1820, and there are several echoes from her career to the current crisis.

Counting deaths

For starters, take the controversy in trying to establish how many people have died from coronavirus. Most countries are still counting only those who died in hospital having tested positive for COVID-19, not those dying in care homes or elsewhere. And there remain questions about whether a positive test for COVID-19 should be considered the cause of death or just a contributory factor.

Nightingale faced a similar problem in her role as superintendent of the female nursing team working in the English general military hospitals in Turkey. On arrival in Scutari in November 1854, she found three separate registers of those dying in hospital: the Adjutant’s daily head-roll of soldiers’ burials, the Medical Officers’ Return, and the Orderly Room return, all of which gave a different account of the number of deaths. She soon set about rectifying this ‘statistical carelessness‘ in order to record accurately how many soldiers had died. Unfortunately, we are still a long way from being able to compare meaningfully the death toll from coronavirus between one country and another.

Classifying diseases

On returning to England in 1856, Nightingale realised that each hospital had its own approach to recording information about its patients. So she created Model Hospital Statistical Forms which were recommended for widespread adoption in 1860 at the London meeting of the International Statistical Congress.

Nightingale had the forms printed and hospitals started using them. Guy´s Hospital published details of its cases from 1854 to 1861, including a table reporting 15 Classes of Diseases and another reporting Causes of Accidents, categorised into 22 groups. Group 21, for example, records all those hospitalised having suffered ‘Bites of animals, 7 dogs, 2 adders, monkey, horse, rat, elephant, and woman’, revealing a somewhat surprising assortment of assailants on the streets of London back then or indeed whenever.

From 1862, hospitals in London began to publish their data annually in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London. By 1866, the fifth and final year that the series was published, the statistics covered 29 hospitals across England. Publication ceased after a committee formed by the Royal College of Surgeons ‘reported adversely upon Miss Nightingale’s Forms‘ claiming it was too costly to collect the data and to make valid comparisons.

Nightingale´s ideas were eventually resurrected by Jacques Bertillon whose system was adopted in 1900 as the first International Classification of Causes of Death. In June 2018, the World Health Organisation launched the 11^th revision, now known as the International Classification of Diseases and, on 25 March 2020, issued emergency ICD-10 and ICD-11 disease and cause of death codes for COVID-19.

Protecting staff

Nightingale herself used data about those who suffered disease and died to push for improvements in care – both for patients and staff. In 1858, one of her papers with William Farr was presented at the Liverpool meeting of the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science comparing mortality rates of hospital nurses with civilian women of a similar age. She identified a higher mortality rate among nurses, demonstrating that they had greater exposure to fever and cholera. She used the data to maintain her pressure on hospitals to improve hygiene and to provide better protection of staff.

She also urged hospitals to keep a register to support a superannuation fund for nurses. If adopted, her nursing register would have recorded the name, age, employment dates, reason for and state of health upon leaving the service, and date and cause of death for those dying in service. Surprisingly even today, this information is not always readily available: on 2 April 2020, the chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing complained to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about the difficulty of getting data about the number of nurses dying from COVID-19. Nightingale would have shared the chief executive’s indignation, stating that ‘money cannot replace … the loss of a well-trained nurse by preventable disease‘. An unforgivable failure by governments the world over in dealing with coronavirus has been that health workers have been inadequately protected from contagion.

Building hospitals

Perhaps the most compelling reason for naming the new coronavirus hospitals after Nightingale is because she ‘revolutionalised ideas of hospital construction‘. Her collected Notes on Hospitals, published in 1863, contained a detailed critique of defects in the construction and layouts of various hospitals in England, France, and Scotland and proposals that addressed these defects.

Nightingale’s ideas on hospital design meant that her advice was sought about the building of civic hospitals throughout the country and ‘upon the construction of military hospitals—whether general or attached to particular barracks—Miss Nightingale was consulted constantly and as a matter of course’. Given how much of her lifetime’s work was devoted to improving conditions for soldiers in the British Army, it is appropriate that military personnel have played such a key role in fitting out the coronavirus hospitals named in Nightingale´s honour.

Florence Nightingale devoted herself to evidence-based analysis of disease and health care ‘for the surer advance of medical knowledge and in the interests of good administration‘. Thanks in no small part to her efforts, our understanding of disease has improved enormously in the 200 years since Nightingale’s birth, as has our knowledge of how to provide effective care in safe environments. Even so, the corononavirus crisis has demonstrated the limits of our ability to combat new threats and that health and care systems still need strengthening to meet the demands being placed upon them.

____________________

About the Author

Andrew Street (@andrewdstreet) is Professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

LSE blog

George Letsas and Virginia Mantouvalou explain why any blanket restriction on NHS workers’ freedom of speech in the light of the pandemic is unlikely to pass the legal test of proportionality, or fit the image of a democracy that values transparency and accountability. 

‘I never thought I lived in a country where freedom of speech is discouraged’, wrote an NHS doctor to The Lancet. The journal receives many messages from front-line health workers who are being threatened with disciplinary action if they raise concerns about their safety at work. According to The Guardian, some NHS staff are altogether forbidden from speaking out publicly about the coronavirus. Intimidation techniques reportedly include threatening emails, monitoring of social media and disciplinary action.

This unprecedented restriction takes place against the background of secrecy surrounding the government’s response to the pandemic. There has so far been limited information both on the situation in hospitals and on the scientific evidence upon which the government acts. With Parliament in recess, the need for public scrutiny is even more pressing.

What is more, wars and pandemics have a substantial degree of a so-called ‘chilling effect’ on free speech: people typically rally behind their leaders and feel reluctant to voice their criticisms, adopting a stance of self-censorship. Even in the absence of any legal restrictions, a pandemic is therefore likely to result in suppression of information and decreased levels of accountability.

NHS workers’ freedom of expression

Governments’ response to the pandemic across Europe, and the rest of the world, has been accompanied by unprecedented restrictions on freedom of movement and assembly. Such restrictions are in principle justified in a context of a public health emergency. Yet they cannot go unchecked. The Council of Europe released guidance to its 47 Member States on how to respond to the pandemic while respecting human rights.

The right to free speech is protected in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). In Handyside v UK, the European Court of Human Rights said that its ‘supervisory functions oblige it to pay the utmost attention to the principles characterising a “democratic society”. Freedom of expression constitutes one of the essential foundations of such a society, one of the basic conditions for its progress and for the development of every man’. In Lingens v Austria, the Court stressed that the press has a right ‘to impart information and ideas on political issues just as on those in other areas of public interest. Not only does the press have the task of imparting such information and ideas: the public also has a right to receive them.’

NHS workers, like all workers, have a right to free speech. Restrictions on their rights through intimidation, monitoring of their social media, and disciplinary action may violate the ECHR directly, since the NHS is a public sector institution. Their right is protected strongly both when they speak to mainstream media and when using social media. It can be limited only if there is a legitimate aim (such as public safety and public health) and insofar as the limitation is proportionate. When applying the test of proportionality in assessing violations of the Convention, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) has accepted that the special nature of some professions must be taken into account.

While certain restrictions on the right to free speech may legitimately be grounded on a duty of loyalty of the worker towards the employer, other restrictions are illegitimate. This is best exemplified by the strong protection of whistleblowers, in the UK Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, the case law of the ECtHR and the Council of Europe Recommendation CM/Rec2014(7). The information that whistleblowers share has to reveal a threat or harm to the public interest. The recent guidance of the Council of Europe explicitly states that ‘the pandemic should not be used to silence whistleblowers’. Workers’ speech that reveals information on a harm to public interest is afforded maximum legal protection.

But what about NHS workers who simply share stories of the situation as they experience it, without seeking to make a public interest disclosure? The guidance accepts that free speech during the pandemic may be limited. It gives the following example: ‘exceptional circumstances may compel responsible journalists to refrain from disclosing government-held information intended for restricted use – such as, for example, information on future measures to implement a stricter isolation policy’. Here, a restriction on press freedom is justified because it prevents imminent harm. If journalists disclosed such information, then many people would try to make the most of the last few days or hours before the measures, spreading the virus and putting lives at risk.

Is the restriction proportionate to a legitimate aim? 

By contrast to the example above, there is no necessary link to harm in allowing NHS staff to share their day-to-day experiences. In fact, there is a lot to be gained: any shortcomings in the government’s approach (such as shortage of protective equipment) will come to light, putting it under pressure to correct them. It may also mobilise civil society to help the NHS effort. Finally and crucially, it will contribute towards holding the authorities into account. Pluralism is crucial not just for a democratic society, but also for a healthy society.

As there has been no official justification for why restricting the free speech of NHS staff is necessary, we can only hypothesise about the rationale. The Guardian article suggests that the aim is to ‘stop scaremongering when communications departments are overloaded with work at a busy time’. While this is legitimate, there is little reason to think that NHS staff can exaggerate the scale of the situation, not least because we know hospitals around the world are being tested to their limits. The issue countries face, including the UK, goes in the opposite direction: several people do not take the threat of the virus seriously enough, flouting the lockdown measures.

Another possible rationale is the protection of patients’ privacy. This is obviously legitimate, but NHS staff are well aware that they should not reveal patients’ identities. Sharing their accounts about their overall experience in the pandemic, however, does not necessarily involve revealing individual patients’ information.

But perhaps the real rationale behind gagging is this: if NHS workers start sharing their horrific experiences, this will undermine the public’s morale and trust in the NHS, and may even lead to social unrest. This rationale is very old, going back to the heavy restrictions on reporting during wartime.

Yet are not really at war and the analogy is problematic on many levels. It suggests that criticisms of the government’s approach are unpatriotic, because we all have to be united against an external threat. But the coronavirus is not a foreign enemy who will take advantage of any publicly available information about the shortcomings of the government. On the contrary, more information leads to increased scrutiny which, in turn, strengthens – rather than weakens – our ability to fight the epidemic.

As to the argument that sharing information about the situation in hospitals will undermine morale, it is deeply paternalistic. It assumes that the nation is not mature enough to understand that even the most advanced and prepared healthcare systems will be stretched by this horrible pandemic and that even the most professional and committed health workers will be challenged, physically and mentally, to treat all the patients. There is nothing unpatriotic about letting healthcare workers share their experiences, horrific as they might be, with the public, whose health they are desperately trying to protect.

It is legitimate, of course, to worry about the danger of civil unrest. If the government is perceived – in the eyes of the public – to be wholly incompetent to deal with the pandemic, we could conceivably be led to instances of unrest, violence or riots. But legal principles here are clear: there must be evidence of a clear and present danger before any drastic measures are taken to limit free speech and no such evidence exists at the moment. And the ban on some NHS staff speaking out appears to be indiscriminate: it does not only apply to images or reporting that may shock or outrage the public. It applies to any comment some NHS staff might want to make about their experiences in hospital. According to well-established human rights case law, indiscriminate and blanket restrictions on human rights are likely to be disproportionate, even if the aim is legitimate.

NHS workers need to be open about the challenges they face. Powerful testimonies help citizens understand the seriousness of the situation and emphasise the immeasurable contribution of NHS workers; they also help NHS staff themselves, many of whom are faced with a risk of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Even assuming that there is a legitimate aim, then, we are not convinced that gagging NHS workers passes the legal test of proportionality. The ban does not fit the image of a democracy that values freedom, transparency, and accountability. The chilling effect that the reported intimidations and threats of disciplinary action has on NHS workers’ speech has to be recognized and alarm us all. It raises questions about how open the government is to accountability and how much it values people’s lives.

____________________

LSE blog

Note: a longer version of the above was first published on the UK Labour Law Blog.

About the Authors

George Letsas is Professor of the Philosophy of Law at UCL.

Virginia Mantouvalou is Professor of Human Rights and Labour Law at UCL.

Deaths from Covid-19 among residents of care homes show a tenfold increase in the two weeks to 3 April, yet even this may be a considerable underestimate. Melanie Henwood explains that, while there will likely be an overall under-reporting of deaths during the pandemic, this is particularly marked with deaths that occur outside hospitals.

The grim accounting of the daily death total from Covid-19 continues. On 10 April, the daily UK figure climbed to 980 – the highest to-date – surpassing the highest daily deaths experienced in Italy and Spain which had been seen as the most severely impacted European countries. There has been some decline in daily deaths since, but it may be too soon to take any comfort from this or to see it as the start of a plateau.

However, the officially recorded Covid-19 deaths reported each day are only part of the picture as they are deaths that occur in hospital, and do not include any in the community or those in residential and nursing homes. There is growing concern that not only do the overall figures underestimate the actual deaths, but that they do so because they ignore the plight of people living and dying with the condition outside hospitals. It is important to know the full picture, not least because deaths in the community are both under the radar and have the potential to rapidly escalate. But it is also vital to address these wider deaths because they disproportionately impact on the oldest and frailest people, and to ignore them devalues the significance of those lives.

Evidence has been accumulating through social media commentary, but also through expert reporting, that the situation in care homes should be a matter of huge concern. In part the circumstances reflect the wider issues afflicting social care practice, particularly the shortages of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), that have been widely identified. If care staff working in the community and in care homes have inadequate PPE, the potential for the infection to spread between people is enormous. Official reporting of the numbers of people dying in care homes from Covid-19 is increasingly being seen as a significant underestimate, and we may be looking at just the tip of the iceberg.

The data reported by Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Adviser, on 13 April stated that there had been outbreaks of Covid-19 infection in one in seven care homes in England, and there were 237 deaths in care homes in England and Wales in the two weeks up to 3 April. But data from major providers of residential care paints a much worse picture: HC-One and MHA together operate 3% of care homes nationally, but have documented deaths of 521 residents in recent weeks.

This is not to argue that there is a conspiracy of silence or deliberate covering up of the evidence, although those views will become increasingly prevalent if the situation is not addressed. Yet it is apparent that the data collection and reporting are inadequate and likely to give false assurance that numbers are significantly lower than the reality. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes provisional weekly registered deaths in England and Wales, but these figures are published 11 days after the week ends. Data up to 3 April 3 was released on 14 April and includes a breakdown of the numbers of deaths “where Covid-19 or suspected Covid-19 was mentioned anywhere on the death certificate, including in combination with other health conditions.” Between 20 March and 3 April in England and Wales, the number of Covid-19 deaths recorded in care homes rose from 20 to 217, a tenfold increase; deaths associated with Covid-19 occurring in hospices rose from two to 33; and those at home in the community from 15 to 136. Over the same period, those Covid-19 deaths recorded in hospital increased from 501 to 3,716. The total deaths from all causes recorded in that week – 16,387 – show an ‘excess mortality’ of more than 6,000 above what would normally be expected for this week of the year. Some 3,475 are directly associated with Covid-19 (according to death certificates), but in reality, many more may be.

There are good reasons to conclude that the numbers of Covid-19 deaths being recorded outside of hospitals are considerably underestimating the actual figures. International evidence is beginning to emerge, and analysis by the International Long-Term Care Policy Network across five European countries indicates that “care home residents have so far accounted for between 42% and 57% of all deaths related to Covid-19.”  If there is inadequate testing of both staff and care home residents for infection, it is obvious that recorded deaths will also underestimate the true figures. Care England (the representative body of independent care providers) has estimated that the number of care home deaths already is nearer to 1,000; around five times higher than the official ONS figure.

It is not just deaths that are important here, it is also about the care and conditions for people who are dying in the community. Increasingly, it is being reported that GPs are not visiting care homes and that residents who become infected (or suspected as being infected) will not be taken to hospital. With PPE shortages not only does this increase the risks that infection will sweep through residents, but that people will die in homes that may lack the expertise and experience to support people dying in respiratory distress. The experience for residents, and the associated trauma of staff trying to support them, are awful to contemplate. An open letter sent to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care by the Alzheimer’s Society, Marie Curie, Age UK, Care England and Independent Age sets out the issue:

We’re seeing people [in care homes] being abandoned to the worst that coronavirus can do. (…) they are told they cannot go to hospital, routinely asked to sign Do Not Resuscitate Orders, and cut off from their families when they need them most.

This issue is about the numbers – about the transparency, completeness, and reliability of the data recording deaths associated with Covid-19, and where those deaths are happening. But more than this, the big issue is what the data – and who decides what is measured and reported – tells us about how the incidence and experience of death from Covid-19 is regarded. All deaths matter; deaths of the frailest and most vulnerable citizens should be viewed as equally sad. The argument that people have ‘lived their life’ or ‘would have died anyway’ is poor comfort for those dying alone, afraid, and in considerable distress. Deaths in hospital from this epidemic are shocking; those occurring behind the closed doors of care homes, hospices, and in people’s own bedrooms, are the untold and apparently largely unrecorded tragedy.

About the Author

---

Melanie Henwood is an independent health and social care research consultant.

LSE Blog

Neoliberals will soon forget their hour of need and will want a return to the past. People must organise to obstruct that return.

Neoliberalism has been the dominant ideology of the western world for the last 40-50 years. Its proponents sought the destruction of the state and limit its capacity to do their bidding, which included deregulation and cuts in hard-won social rights for people.

For neoliberals, markets, privatisation and commodification of everything was the answer rather than building a just society to enable everyone to live a fulfilling life. They portrayed public services as a burden on taxpayers rather than a social investment. Since 2010, a much lower proportion of the gross domestic product has gone to the National Health Service. Thousands of nursing vacancies remained unfilled. The government imposed wage freezes on public sector workers to give tax cuts to corporations and the rich. The government policies made a few people rich but most people struggled to make ends meet.

The light-touch regulation reduced HMRC’s resources. Banks, accountancy and law firms excelled at devising complex tax avoidance schemes. Billionaire Sir Philip Green’s BHS used intragroup transactions and a labyrinth of opaque offshore companies to returns to shareholders. The major shareholder in BHS was Monaco resident Lady Green and she was not liable to any tax upon dividends and other income from BHS. Green was not alone. Sir Richard Branson, resident in British Virgin Islands, operates through a maze of offshore trusts and corporate structures. He is a self-confessed ‘tax exile’ and his businesses such as Virgin Healthcare have paid no tax. The above are just the tip of an iceberg which has depleted the public purse and possibilities of investment in social infrastructure. Every year HMRC fails to collect around £34bn-£35bn of taxes due to avoidance, evasion and errors. Other studies estimate the amounts to be between £58.6bn and £122bn a year.

The folly of the above haunts the UK. The government imposed a lockdown to control the spread of the deadly virus and most business activity came to a halt. Markets and tax havens have not bailed out anyone. The richest 1% of people in the UK owns the same wealth as 80% of the population, or 53 million people, but the rich have not bailed out anyone. Only the state is providing support for employees, the self-employed and businesses. Billionaires such as Sir Philip Green and tax exile Sir Richard Branson head the queue seeking taxpayer funded bailouts for their business empires. Only the hollowed-out state, underfunded public services and public purse now stands between neoliberals and economic oblivion.

Rich neoliberals are holed-up in their big mansions and private islands, but the daily risks of providing essential services are being borne by some of the most poorly paid people. These include nurses, paramedics, midwives, radiographers, care assistants, shop workers, refuse workers, delivery drivers, and postmen. Some of the lowest-paid public sector workers at HMRC and the Department of Work and Pensions are trying to get aid to people.

Neoliberals have long regarded anyone claiming social security benefits as scroungers. They have been content to see Statutory Sick Pay fixed at derisory £94.25 per week. We all remember how Ian Duncan Smith, former leader of the Conservative Party, boasted that he could live on £53 a week in benefits. With the spread of coronavirus, many middle-class neoliberals are facing the possibility of living of £94.25 a week and they don’t like it.

Some 42% of the UK adults survive on an annual income of less than £12,500 and draw little sympathy from neoliberals. The current national minimum wage for workers aged 25 and over is £8.72 an hour, which translates as £1,500 a month and the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinks it is too high. The government has responded to middle-class anxieties by fixing the wage subsidy, from the public purse, at maximum of £2,500 a month. This begs the question why the national minimum wage is set well below that level. If £2,500 a month, or £30,000 per annum is required for a decent life, how can society condemn a large proportion of the population to live on amounts less than that.

The UK is estimated to have around 320,000 homeless and successive governments have done little about it. With concerns about the spread of coronavirus infections, central and local government agencies have managed to house all of them. It just goes to show what can be done.

Neoliberals will soon forget their hour of need and will want a return to the past. People must organise to obstruct that return. The state needs to be mobilised to ensure that homeless people are never again thrown out on the street. Investment in public services and healthcare must be seen as a public good. Inequalities need to be reduced by checking tax avoidance and taxing wealth and redistributing the proceeds. Everyone needs a decent minimum income and the current minimum wage and social security benefits are not enough. A universal basic income, much derived by neoliberals, needs to be considered.

Prem Sikka is Professor of Accounting at University of Sheffield and Emeritus Professor of Accounting at University of Essex.

Science and welfare are at the heart of this crisis – which is bad for right-wing populists. But they won’t be wrongfooted for long

The populist right has built their electoral strength on boisterousness and arrogant self-confidence. Yet, amid the coronavirus pandemic, figures such as Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Jair Bolsonaro seem to be confounded. They are either desperately clinging to a narrative of normality (it’s just a flu), or have already been forced to make embarrassing U-turns acknowledging the gravity of the crisis.
Boris Johnson had to abandon the government’s “herd immunity” strategy when new scientific evidence made apparent its horrific human cost. He recently tested positive for the virus and is now accused of complacency and lack of leadership. In Italy, Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right League party and former deputy prime minister, appears downbeat, unable to wear the robes of the responsible statesman this emergency calls for; his unabashed criticism of government has even earned him the label “unpatriotic”. In France, Marine Le Pen seems to have vanished altogether from the media, while Bolsonaro’s persistence in denying the crisis is leaving him increasingly isolated.
Will the coronavirus ‘kill populism’? Don’t count on it | Cas Mudde
In the US, Trump’s strategy has been zigzagging. After downplaying the significance of the virus for weeks, he was forced to declare a national emergency. Having backtracked last week, asserting that the lockdown would end by Easter to avoid damaging the economy, he has now conceded it will have to last until the end of April. It is true that his approval ratings have gone up, paralleling what happened with George W Bush after September 11. But Trump is clearly worried about the electoral consequences of a massive death toll and a recession that could see unemployment of over 20%.
AdvertisementHide
The difficulties experienced by national populists are unsurprising given they are no friends of the issues at the heart of this crisis: health, welfare and science. On the health front, the crisis reveals the folly of decades of underfunding and privatisation of the health system. Trump, Johnson and Salvini have embarrassing questions to answer in regard to their record as enemies of public healthcare. Furthermore, the crisis calls for a sea change in economic policy that is at odds with the ideological premises of national populism, which combines chauvinism on the cultural front and ultra-neoliberal policies on the economic front.
The glaring need for state protection of strategic national industries, starting with health equipment and pharmaceuticals, is no anathema for national-populists who have already embraced trade protectionism. But the populist right has strongly opposed welfare measures that are becoming a matter of necessity to avoid social catastrophe. Having repeatedly branded these policies as “dangerous” and “anti-patriotic”, these politicians find themselves in the embarrassing situation of having to espouse them.
Another skeleton in the closet is national-populists’ disparagement of science. The coronavirus emergency confronts us with a threat that is best understood and measured through the lens of science. Epidemiologists and virologists have acquired media prominence and the public has been diligently following their recommendations. It is not clear whether this will lead to greater public trust in science and an erosion of the anti-science attitudes that national populist leaders have toyed with. However, it can be expected that citizens will take more heed of the risks flagged by scientists, including the climate emergency, which is also bound to exacerbate the spread of diseases.
National-populists are well known for stoking people’s fears. But the fears now prevalent are not of the kind these leaders are best positioned to exploit. Due to the urgency of health and economic worries, migration – the populist right’s main enemy – has fallen in the list of priorities. Travel bans, and the fact that Europe and the US are the present focus of the pandemic, are leading to a drop in migration to these regions. In fact, we are now witnessing a historic reversal, with Mexico aiming to block the border with the US and African countries suspending flights from Europe, while UK farmers are organising charter planes to fly in farm workers from eastern Europe to prevent fruit and vegetables being left unpicked. However, if the global economic crisis results in a new wave of migration like that of 2015, this scenario could drastically change – national-populists will try to validate their narrative of cosmopolitan globalisation as a dangerous vector of all sorts of ills.
If the coronavirus crisis has momentarily disoriented the populist right, this does not mean it is vanquished. It would be misguided for the left to believe that this crisis will work out in its favour. The health crisis is bound to be followed by a deep economic crisis, more similar to the Great Depression than to the 2008 financial crisis, and the populist right has already demonstrated its ability to prey on popular despair and find social scapegoats for economic ills. It can be expected that it will go down the same road, if anything becoming even more vicious.
The authoritarian measures implemented on Monday by Viktor Orbán in Hungary, with the suspension of parliament and the introduction of government by decree, may be the shape of things to come. In Italy, Salvini had no qualms about applauding Orbán’s move. We are also likely to see an exacerbation of anti-Chinese rhetoric. Trump made no apologies for calling Covid-19 “the Chinese virus”, while Steve Bannon argued that Covid-19 is a “Chinese Communist Party virus”. Salvini has proposed that “if the Chinese government knew [about the virus] and didn’t tell it publicly, it committed a crime against humanity”, and allies in Brazil and Spain are adopting a similar line.
AdvertisementHide
Given the ties among national-populists, including their botched attempt to establish a “nationalist international” under the auspices of Bannon’s Movement, this synchrony should not be taken as accidental. It has all the look of a coordinated strategy to channel the rage and despair caused by the crisis’s brutal human and economic toll towards a racial and ideological enemy conveniently identified in the Chinese government. Along with self-proclaimed socialists, all opponents are likely to be smeared as “Chinese collaborationists”: centrist US presidential candidate Joe Biden has already been termed “China’s choice for president” by the conservative National Review.
What may be in store is thus something much worse than the populist right of the 2010s: an extreme right using the whole arsenal of the red scare and rightwing authoritarianism to intimidate opponents and defend its interests from demands for meaningful economic redistribution. Though it has been confounded by this crisis, the populist right has not been suppressed. It is just mutating.
• Paolo Gerbaudo is a political theorist and the director of the Centre for Digital Culture at King’s College London

Link to Guardian