Nicholas Agar explains how to understand some of the crazy things world leaders have said about the pandemic
High on the list of callous statements about the pandemic was the one recently attributed to British Prime Minister Boris Johnson that he would rather see bodies piled “high in their thousands” than send Britons into another lockdown.
According to the BBC, the remark was made during a “heated discussion” about lockdowns. Johnson responded with a denial. But others came forward to confirm it.
The problem for Johnson’s defenders is the statement just seems “too Boris” to be credibly disavowed. You can almost imagine the arm gestures that might have accompanied it. It’s a line that looks terrible after the deaths of over 120,000 Britons from Covid-19.
How should we understand statements like this? My advice as a philosopher is to seek to understand what was going on behind them. It shouldn’t be dismissed as “Boris being Boris”. Johnson’s statement reflects a much keener interest in his future reputation than in the welfare of the Britons of 2020.
Other leaders seem to share this attitude. Former US President Donald Trump’s press conferences contained many incredulous journalists’ questions about why so little was done even when “you knew this was a deadly virus”. Bob Woodward’s 2020 book Rage makes clear Trump was aware from early on how badly Covid-19 could turn out. Yet he long persisted in making light of it – for example, on 27 February 2020: “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” It didn’t.
We might criticise this attitude as short-sighted, especially when compared with the judgments of other leaders who responded to the risk and promptly locked down. But this is a misdiagnosis. Statements like Johnson’s are long-sighted, in a way that could be good for historical assessments of them even if they express disregard for the Britons of 2020. They can happen when politicians have an eye to the judgment of history and seek to place bets on how they’ll be remembered.
Beware leaders placing hopeful bets on the judgment of history
We see this long-sightedness in the reluctance of former US President George W Bush and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to own up to the error of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. They come up with their own versions of the line reportedly uttered by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in 1972 about the influence of the French Revolution: “It's too early to tell.”
The invasion of Iraq seems directly responsible for much of the conflict besetting the Middle East. As his presidency wound down in 2007, Bush observed to CBS’s 60 Minutes programme: “I don’t think you’ll really get the full history of the Bush administration until long after I’m gone.” Both Bush and Blair persist in believing it was correct to invade Iraq.
It’s the long-sightedness of Bush and Blair that permits them to place these bets on how they’ll be remembered. Who’s to say the citizens of a prosperous and democratic Iraq of 2050 won’t celebrate Bush and Blair as liberators? Obviously, there was a rough patch in the years following the invasion, but by 2030 things were already starting to come right. Both leaders of the Coalition of the Willing can certainly hope.
Deaths and ‘only statistics’
According to a line frequently attributed to Joseph Stalin, “If only one man dies of hunger, that is a tragedy. If millions die, that’s only statistics.” Stalin’s observation applies especially as the deaths from coronavirus pass into history. Soon they’ll become “only” statistics.
People become hedonically normalised to death from ‘flu. Which is another way to say they get used to it. Annually, there are between 290,000 and 650,000 influenza-related respiratory deaths worldwide. If you were Boris Johnson, you might observe that the bodies do really “pile high in their thousands” from seasonal ‘flu. But for most of us these are just boring ‘flu statistics.
The UK and US are now emerging from the pandemic. Those deaths – deeply traumatic at the time – will become “only statistics”. We’ll remember them but the hurt will fade.
Don’t lose control of the historical narrative
If you’re a world leader gambling on your future reputation, the worst thing you can do is lose control of the historical narrative. This seems to have been the fate of the reviled Roman emperor Nero, explored in an exhibition currently at the British Museum. Nero is notorious as the leader who “fiddled while Rome burned”. But historians are confident this didn’t happen because he wasn’t there when the fire started. Nero had the misfortune to be followed by leaders much keener on denigrating him than presenting themselves as continuing his glorious legacy.
What’s the lesson for leaders keen to be well remembered? Johnson can think it would be fine if the bodies piled “high in their thousands”. But he mustn’t be caught saying it. That’s a way to lose control of the pandemic narrative. Coronavirus deaths will soon be “only statistics”. But the leader who says he would rather see bodies piled “high in their thousands” risks being remembered as the man who fiddled while Britons died.
