The UK’s gathering Covid-19 autumn storm
I fear the most challenging winter perhaps in my approaching 60 years. Perhaps I am too much of a pessimist but as set out below there are some very worrying straws in the growing autumn wind….
Teachers, councillors, parents and teaching unions now fear that the same incompetence by ministers will spill over and have consequences when schools reopen. Headteachers say that the government has been so distracted by the exam farce that it has left schools in the dark, giving little guidance on reopening plans over recent weeks. Universities are wondering how they will handle the admissions chaos that has resulted in more students reaching their required grades than they have places to offer.
For many people, including the prime minister, August was a month to try to get away from Covid-19. But September will be when reality strikes, and leadership is needed more than ever. The end of the holidays and the return to “normal” will be anything but. Many hundreds of thousands of working people are expected to be made redundant as the furlough scheme winds down. Any job opportunities there are in a shrinking economy will be fought over by ever larger numbers as graduates join the competition for employment.
The chancellor Rishi Sunak was expected to deliver an autumn budget next month, preparing for potential tax rises and to begin to pay the huge bills already incurred from Covid-19. But such is the anxiety over a second wave that it may be delayed until next year, when the true cost of Covid is known.
As winter approaches, the inadequate test-and-trace system will come under more pressure, exposing it as anything but the “world-beating” system ministers claim it to be.
To add to the uncertainty, Brexit battles with the EU will resume in earnest soon after MPs return to Westminster on 1 September, and fears will grow that the UK will end its transition period on 31 December without a deal, thereby inflicting more harm on the economy at the very point when it will least be able to afford it.