We’re subjecting ourselves to a certain amount of headscratching here:
On one level, the argument about what Sir Simon McDonald said to the foreign affairs select committee this week can be dismissed as a storm in a Whitehall teacup. Hours after the head of the foreign office had called Britain’s refusal to join the European Union’s procurement efforts during the Covid-19 pandemic a “political decision”, McDonald retracted his words. Whitehall-watchers are fascinated. The wider world has bigger things to worry about.
But on another level, this week’s row is political dynamite – and for two main reasons.
First, and more immediately, the McDonald affair is another challenge, this time from the Whitehall high command itself, to the government’s increasingly desperate attempts to show that ministers have successfully gripped the effort to secure life-saving medical equipment and protective kit for the fight against the virus. At its most serious, it comes down to an admission that ministers who previously said that the UK did not take part in the ventilator procurement programme because of “communication” errors were actually in a position, early on in the pandemic, to save more lives by joining the scheme, and yet deliberately chose not to.
As we’ve pointed out before around here we are pragmatists. We should do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. So, the important question here is has that EU scheme saved any lives?
As far as anyone knows that joint and several buying scheme has delivered not one single piece of equipment or protection to anyone at all. Not joining an ineffective scheme seems like a sensible thing for a government to do to us.
But that is to be pragmatic, isn’t it? Instead of being political where the desirability of a course of action is determined by matters other than those of effectiveness. Here, those who think there should be more European cooperation insist that such cooperation is a good in itself, whatever the outcome. Therefore, whatever the outcome or effectiveness of the cooperation or not those who don’t do more of it are to be castigated. Even, scarce resources at a time of emergency must be devoted to doing so.
Which is why we continue to insist that politics isn’t a good way of doing things. Because the politics is never about either the doing of things or the things that need to be done.