By Chris Paul Otaigbe
As early as Monday, British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, could resume work having recovered from the novel coronavirus, according to a media report.
Last Friday morning, Daily Telegraph newspaper reported that Johnson would be returning to office in London at a critical stage of the pandemic, as his party members wish to gradually ease lockdown restrictions.
Although his office had not confirmed the report, Foreign Minister Dominic Raab is currently heading the government, which has come under criticism for its handling of the pandemic.
Johnson was recuperating at Chequers Country Estate outside London, where he had been conducting some work duties including taking phone calls from the Queen and U.S. President Donald Trump, the Press Association news agency reported.
Johnson and his pregnant fiancée Carrie Symonds, 32, who has also suffered from COVID-19 symptoms, had been driven out of Downing Street with their dog.
Johnson was soon admitted to intensive care in London as his breathing became more restricted by COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. He was released from the hospital on April 12.
According to Johns Hopkins university data, more than 18,500 people in Britain have died from COVID-19.
As he prepares to resume, Boris Johnson faces the biggest challenge of his office as he recovers from COVID-19: how to lift a lockdown that is destroying bands of the British economy without activating a deadly second wave of the outbreak.
At 55, he is on the mend at his country residence after spending three nights in intensive care at a London hospital earlier this month with COVID-19 complications.
As speculation mounts about his preparation to return to work, the Prime Minister is under pressure to explain just how and when the world’s fifth-largest economy will exit the crippling lockdown.
Johnson’s government, who put Britain on lockdown almost too late after his European peers had gone weeks into the mode, came under fire for his country’s limited testing capacity and for failing to deliver enough personal protective equipment to front-line health workers.
His administration exit plan out of the lockdown, Observers say, will be brought under the magnifying glass as investors try to work out which major economy will be worst hit by the most severe public health crisis since the 1918 influenza outbreak.
At over 23,000 deaths, the United Kingdom has become the fifth-worst official death toll in the world, after the United States, Italy, Spain and France.
According to government scientists, the death toll in the country may be on the downward slope in a couple of weeks.
Luckily for Johnson and the people of Great Britain, the Prime Minister’s coronavirus infection did not affect the economy, as the markets shrugged off news of his COVID-19 positive status. Even information that the U.K. Prime Minister had been taken into intensive care in a London hospital did not disturb capital market operations, according to the BBC report.
That didn’t imply investors cared less about the man or woman who happens to be governing Britain. It was a sign of robust confidence in the capacity of U.K. institutions to keep operating, regardless of who or how the operators are.
The pound GBPEUR, -0.19% quickly recovered after an initial fall. The FTSE100 UKX, -0.64% stock exchange market rose on Tuesday, up 2.7% in midday trading, along with other European markets SXXP, -0.37%. And yields on U.K. 10-year gilts TMBMKGB-10Y, 0.289% spiked briefly before falling back to their Monday morning level.
Had Johnson’s health deteriorated to the point of incapacitating him to perform his function as the head of government, that singular event would have thrown Britain, unprecedentedly, into the depth of uncharted political waters.
The U.K. doesn’t have a determined process to deal with the case where a prime minister becomes unable to do his or her job. One of the characteristics of what the British call their “constitution” is that it is not a formal, written text with rules and procedures written in stone for decades.
Rather, it is a flexible addition of successive laws and political practices and customs, contrasting with the serious constitutions of countries such as the U.S., France and most European democracies.
The document closest to a written constitution is currently the “cabinet manual” written by a civil servant back in 2010, compiling the laws, customs and practices of the U.K. institutional system.
It has no legal standing in and by itself, and must rather be read like a guide to follow by governments.
The U.K. system is clear on what happens in case of death or resignation of the prime minister: the ruling party will choose a new leader, whom the Queen will then appoint as head of government. However, there is nothing in the case of a temporary absence from the job.
U.K. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab had also been appointed “First Secretary of State” by Johnson when the current cabinet was formed in December 2019 following the election. So, Raab was naturally confirmed as a caretaker when the Prime Minister isolated himself after testing positive for the virus. But that is not a general rule, it was merely a reflection of the way Johnson wanted. He could have chosen someone else to chair the cabinet meeting in his place.
Johnson could also have appointed a deputy prime minister when he formed his cabinet. He did not, because he didn’t have to. And even if he had, the so-called deputy wouldn’t have necessarily become the caretaker in any case. Like “the first secretary of state,” deputy PM is an honorary title that doesn’t come with specific powers unless the PM decides it does.
In other words, the active powers of a deputy exist at the pleasure of the PM.
During the first term of David Cameron’s premiership, from 2010 to 2015, Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg was the deputy PM. But as leader of the coalition’s junior party, he wouldn’t have taken over if Cameron had been incapacitated.
In his interview with the BBC on Tuesday morning, Michael Gove, a senior member of the government with the title of ‘Minister for the Cabinet Office’, contended Johnson’s absence, while away in intensive care, does not automatically confer powers of an acting Prime Minister on Raab, adding that decisions would be taken from now on.
Gove is among the ministers said to have competed, unsuccessfully, for the position of caretaker when Johnson tested positive to the virus, but he is right, legally because according to the U.K. system, the PM is first among equals in the cabinet, the ultimate decision-making body of government.
The manual stipulates that the cabinet system of government is based on the principle of collective responsibility. But the U.K. system is silent on two points: The first is, who is in charge of the nuclear button when the PM is incapacitated. The only official response, as Gove and others reiterated this week, is that “procedures are in place” for such cases, but that nothing more can be said due to the need for secrecy.
The second source of uncertainty is what happens if the PM becomes unable to perform his or her job but doesn’t realize it and cannot or refuses to resign. For example, should he have a case of dementia, or of a long coma?
Only the Queen, the cabinet, or the ruling party can force a Prime Minister to resign as there are no written rules for firing by the monarch, neither has there been any precedent since the early 19th century.
The road to this near the reckless trajectory of United Kingdom’s COVID-19 challenge, on Johnson’s watch, is reminiscent of the Prime Minister’s personal life.
Born in New York City to British parents, Johnson at first held United Kingdom – United States dual citizenship. In 2014, he acknowledged he was disputing a demand for capital gains tax from the US tax authorities on a property that he inherited in the United Kingdom which ultimately he paid.
In February 2015, he announced his intention to renounce his US citizenship to demonstrate his loyalty to the UK which he did in 2016. With knowledge of French, Italian, German, Spanish, Latin, and Ancient Greek, Johnson frequently employed and alluded to classical references in both his newspaper columns and his speeches.
In 2007, Johnson said he had smoked cannabis before he went to university. He has also said he had used cocaine. Baptized a Catholic and later confirmed into the Church of England, Johnson was reported to have declared that “his faith comes and goes and that he is not a serious practising Christian. He holds ancient Greek statesman and orator Pericles as a personal hero.
Regarding ancient Greek and Roman polytheism, Johnson’s biographer, Andrew Gimson said it is clear that [Johnson] is inspired by the Romans, and even more by the Greeks, and repelled by the early Christians. Johnson views secular humanism positively and sees it as owing more to the classical world than Christian thinking.
His relationships, similarly, ran a reckless routine of romantic affairs with different women at various times.
In 1987, he married Allegra Mostyn-Owen, daughter of the art historian William Mostyn-Owen and Italian writer Gaia Servadio. The couple’s marriage was annulled in 1993 and 12 days later Johnson married Marina Wheeler, a barrister, daughter of journalist and broadcaster Charles Wheeler and his wife, Dip Singh.
Five weeks later, Wheeler and Johnson’s first child was born. The Wheeler and Johnson families have known each other for decades and Marina Wheeler was at the European School, Brussels, at the same time as her future husband. They have four children: two daughters and two sons.
Between 2000 and 2004, Johnson had an affair with Spectator columnist Petronella Wyatt when he was its editor, resulting in two terminated pregnancies. In April 2006, the News of the World alleged that Johnson was having an affair with Guardian journalist Anna Fazackerley. The pair refused to comment and shortly afterwards Johnson employed Fazackerley.
In 2009, Johnson fathered a daughter with Helen McIntyre, an art consultant. In 2013, the Court of Appeal discharged an injunction banning reporting of his daughter’s existence. The judge ruled that the public had a right to know about Johnson’s “reckless” behaviour.
In September 2018, Johnson and Wheeler issued a statement confirming that after 25 years of marriage they had separated “several months ago”, and had begun divorce proceedings. They reached a financial settlement in February 2020.
In 2019, Johnson was living with Carrie Symonds, the daughter of Matthew Symonds, son of John Beavan, Baron Ardwick and a co-founder of The Independent newspaper, and Josephine McAfee, a lawyer. Symonds had worked for the Conservative party since 2009 and worked on Johnson’s 2012 campaign to be re-elected as Mayor. On 29 February 2020, Johnson and Symonds announced their engagement and that Symonds was expecting a baby in early summer. They became engaged in late 2019.
Carrie Symonds, 32, tweeted that she had spent the past week in bed with tell-tale signs of Covid-19, but is now recuperating well.
In the tweet, she said, “I haven’t needed to be tested and, after seven days of rest, I feel stronger and I’m on the mend.”
As he prepares to resume active work on Monday, Johnson would have to reinvigorate the battle to get rid of the virus before his baby comes so Carrie does not deliver his latest child into a world pummeled by a vicious pandemic.
