For Great Britain and Boris Johnson, 2021 kicks off with a new Covid challenge

Mr. Johnson faces a difficult – and politically precarious – balancing act as he and his advisers try to weigh public health risks against the economic pain, while pandemic voters who have weary maintain support. The prime minister has been criticized from both those who say he is doing too little too late and those who complain that he has gone too far with restrictions and seriously damaged the economy.

In trying to work out a middle ground, Mr. Johnson for weeks publicly opposed calls for tougher lockdown measures advocated by scientific advisers, before finally deciding to apply them as a new and more contagious variant of the virus that was rapidly spreading across the country and filling hospitals with the sick.

During his tenure in Downing Street, Mr. Johnson often waited until the last minute to make important decisions and used his political flair to sell them. That approach paid off by uniting his conservative party on Brexit and negotiating a new trade deal with the European Union.

But critics say it has served him poorly in dealing with the virus, leading to unnecessary delays, more disruption and public confusion. Britain, which has recorded more than 75,000 deaths from Covid, is on track to have the highest death rate in Europe. It has also suffered one of the greatest contractions in economic output. The economy at the end of the third quarter was 8.6% smaller than a year earlier, a larger drop in output than in France, Germany or Italy.

Over the past year, Mr. Johnson’s administration has deviated from considering a relatively hands-off course to build herd immunity to a range of interventions of varying severity. There have been other policy shifts as well, from rejecting masks to endorsing them, from subsidizing restaurant meals to banning dining out and increasing and decreasing the number of people allowed at social gatherings.

Government officials say the pandemic strategy has been refined as understanding of the virus has improved. Overall, Mr. Johnson has said repeatedly that lockdowns should be used sparingly and as a last resort, noting the human cost.

Public approval of Mr. Johnson’s approach to the crisis has faded as policy changes have accumulated. According to poll YouGov, 36% of Britons currently approve of the government’s response to the pandemic, up from 72% in the spring. However, it is clear that in the short term the British are at least predominantly in favor of restrictions to prevent the spread of the virus. A Savanta ComRes poll on Tuesday found that 79% of Britons supported the lockdown.

The coming months will be crucial for the prime minister, said Robert Hayward, a Conservative House of Lords member and pollster. The UK government has invested heavily in vaccines and is approving – and striving to deploy them – faster than any other Western country.

Mr Johnson has pledged to vaccinate 13 million Britons most vulnerable to the virus by mid-February to pave the way for an end to pandemic restrictions. Around the same time, the economic impact of the trade deal he signed with the EU last month will start to be felt in Britain.

“Judgments will be made at that stage,” said Mr Hayward. “That’s when the fog will disappear.”

It will be difficult for Mr. Johnson to avoid blaming any shortcomings. Unlike in the US, Prime Ministers under Britain’s centralized government system are responsible for both the nationalized health care system and the implementation of lockdown rules throughout England.

A small but noisy libertarian cluster of conservative lawmakers has pushed for restrictions to be lifted. Partly in response to them, Mr. Johnson has sought to keep the economy as open as possible by avoiding the most draconian restrictions and making £ 22 billion, the equivalent of $ 30 billion, available to run a test and trace system. finance performed poorly by far.

Brexit will soften the blow to Mr Johnson. During the 2019 elections, he acquired a new basis for Brexit that has remained faithful to date. “They are essentially willing to support Johnson regardless of his approach to specific issues,” said Matthew Goodwin, a professor of politics at the University of Kent. Whether they stay that way depends on how Mr. Johnson manages to revive the post-industrial areas of the country after Covid and Brexit.

Currently, the conservatives remain at the same level – or in some polls slightly ahead of the opposition Labor party. And Mr. Johnson can be a convincing politician.

“He’s an expert in a charming audience that may have been angry with him,” said Matthew Flinders, a professor at the University of Sheffield. “So no, I have a feeling he won’t be hit too hard.” And the next election is in four years.

Yet the past weeks have been particularly turbulent. The discovery of a new variant of the virus in southern England, which scientists say is up to 70% more transmissible, combined with a relaxation of government restrictions in some places over Christmas, almost doubled the number of infections at the end of the year. end of December. Data released Tuesday showed that one in 50 people in England had the virus in early January.

Mr. Johnson introduced a three-pronged system of restrictions in October in an effort to contain caseload while limiting restrictions on the economy. As the number of cases continued to increase, he ordered a four-week lockdown in England on November 5.

According to a gauge measuring the rigor of public health measures developed by the University of Oxford, the November lockdown was slightly less restrictive than the lockdown imposed in the spring during the first wave of the Covid-19 outbreak. The meter puts the November lockdown stringency at 75 on a 100-point scale, compared to nearly 80 in March and April.

Data from Apple Inc.

and alphabet Inc.’s

Google unit shows that the second lock didn’t stop people from traveling at the same rate as the first, which may have accelerated the spread of the variant.

In London and Kent, for example, two places where the new variant made its appearance, trips to stores in April were about 80% to 90% below their pre-pandemic norm, according to data from Google. In November, the number of such trips was about 60% to 70% lower.

Scientists at Imperial College London said in a Dec. 31 study that their research suggests the lockdown measures in force in November were enough to combat older variants of the coronavirus, but not the more contagious version.

Despite the worrying trends emerging over Christmas, warnings from scientific advisers and images of ambulances queuing outside hospitals surfaced, Mr. Johnson Sunday on a chat show and advocated for elementary school children to return to school on Monday.

Monday, Mr. Johnson a hospital to celebrate the UK being the first country to introduce the new vaccine developed by AstraZeneca PLC and Oxford University. He hinted that further restrictions would come. By that evening, aides were preparing his speech to the nation: another lockdown would be coming and schools would close.

“The next few weeks will be the hardest yet, but I truly believe we are entering the final stage of the battle,” said Mr Johnson.