Business Monitor


Prime Minister for a day


Marketing expert, Paul Clapham, ponders what he would do if given the opportunity to be Prime Minister for the day, should we ever have to face fighting against coronavirus again.


I


’m going to play ‘Prime Minister for a day’, actually a bit longer unless that dog pees on my personal belongings. Just for once, I’m with Boris on this one. In fact, I have learned a sneaking appreciation for our Prime Minister. I’m never going to like, respect or admire the bloke but he does seem to have learned the hard way how to be PM. In particular during the process of actually delivering the vaccine – i.e. the bit that really matters – Britain showed ‘em how. I’d have put serious money on Boris’s boys to mess that up.


So, let’s have someone attached to No.10, not a PR or an MP who ‘deserves a job’ thank you, but someone who can talk to other governments about serious scientific subjects, who knows what he or she doesn’t know and who to bring on board as a solution. I would ask Bill Gates for his input. He’s a fan of Britain it seems and this is in any case a world issue. I think he’d say yes.


Flying round the world Next comes some serious conflict with the eco warriors of this world, because people are going to have to fly to meetings in Wellington, Washington, Seoul and Singapore. OK in theory they could all go in sailing ships, but come off it. Actually going to the places that got a handle on COVID might teach experts a lot.


We are going to have to do this because COVID or something similarly nasty is going to happen again and we want every nation prepared for the early stages. In principle this looks like a job for the United Nations – fine as long as they think and act


| 22 | May 2021


like one of their peace-keeping forces not one of their talk-shops.


Given that such an event is a worldwide problem, should we plan for worldwide consistency of response? Indeed, is that practicable? Much as I might approve tough measures against those opposed to vaccinations, in some countries they would be impossible to implement. Can we have details of Sweden’s experience of little government input please? In particular is there anything they could have done better to enable them to run their lives without lockdown. We don’t mind looking dated compared to Sweden, do we?


The big interest must surely be what did they do in New Zealand that made them such an all-fired success at dealing with coronavirus. I have read that the first trick is to have a woman head of state – it worked for New Zealand, South Korea and, at the outset, Germany. That may not be idle flippancy – women have a different take on dealing with issues of life and death. By contrast you have Boris Johnson who looked like a threat rather than a solution until the vaccine saved his reputation. Going forward, women leaders are going to be a feature of our lives. In addition to the nations above, Denmark, Iceland and Finland have female prime ministers. The joke in Scandinavia is that soon there will be calls for selection bias in favour of men. From what I can tell, the magic solution was to jump on the problem as soon as it raised its ugly head. Glibly thinking we’ll solve this, no trouble, when we’ve got a quiet minute, did not do the job. It is also my strong impression that over-confidence in general was a


disaster looking for somewhere to happen. Probably my biggest criticism of Prime Minister Johnson was that he continuously over-promised and under-delivered and that his desperate wish to be popular was what drove him to make those wild promises and run away from any really tough decisions. Please note that this is not so far different from the man who occupied the White House until recently.


How to


A civil servant who knows how to write for public consumption should be given the (I’d guess) enjoyable brief of bringing together the ‘coronavirus how to’ information from around the world. A certain amount of nationalistic boasting should be valid. In theory this guide ought to be saleable worldwide. Someone is surely going to do it. How about we Brits? If you want to feel anger about COVID, take a look at a new book by Jonathan Calvert and George Arbuthnott, Failures of State. They have managed to collect chapter and verse of the mess made of fighting coronavirus by the current government. I have read an intro and it makes my blood boil, not least given the desultory 1% pay rise offered to frontline NHS staff.


At the same time let’s share the equivalent of folk memories. Every locality will have its stories, some good, some bad, but put together would represent what a town or village thinks of as their success against COVID. This could have a printwear element. Imagine a COVID shirt day – national would be great but local or regional stacks up, too.


www.printwearandpromotion.co.uk


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