Another New Normal

Six years ago, I wrote a blog about bereavement called The New Normal. I doubted then that I had invented the expression, it’s just a combination of three mundane words after all. From some cursory research, it seems that the first recorded use of the expression is from 1918, in an article by Henry Wise Wood in the National Electric Light Association Bulletin, an American publication in which he wrote of “the new normal” in the wake of The Great War.

Since then the phrase has been used to describe life after 9/11, and after the global recession in 2008. When I wrote my blog about bereavement in 2014, I was not consciously aware of the expression, but it is the way of things that words, phrases, and expressions worm their way into our subconscious and pop up as though they were original thoughts.

The life we have to look forward to after coronavirus is being described as another “new normal.” That expression, together with the single word “unprecedented” as in, “we live in unprecedented times,” is becoming so overworked that there is little chance of anyone slipping it into an article or a conversation and genuinely thinking it is their own original thought, not for a long while.

What we consider normal may never return, but we are fortunate in having today’s technology while we face this pandemic. In particular, the internet and contactless payment methods have made our lives more tolerable. Had this pandemic struck in the days before those technologies were available it’s difficult to imagine how we could have coped.

Being retired, the question does not arise, but my job – at least at the end of my working life – would have enabled me to work from home, and my wife worked from home for a few years before taking redundancy in 2019. Much of Britain’s workforce faces many and various stresses and strains at present. For essential workers, and especially those who use public transport, there are necessary precautions they must take to safeguard themselves from infection. There are those whose jobs have been furloughed, those who have been laid off, and those who are on precarious contracts. These people ought to be at the heart of government thinking when weighing up how to loosen the lockdown.

For government, balancing the health of the nation with its economic wellbeing is a delicate task.  An increase in unemployment is going to be one inevitable consequence in the aftermath of the government’s response to coronavirus, although it has to be said that the government are making a small contribution towards addressing this with the news that 50,000 people will be needed to fill out customs forms in the wake of Britain leaving the EU in January 2021.

Cabinet Office minister Michael Gove announced this week that these agents would be required due to Britain’s more complex trading relationship with the EU come January next year. Training sufficient customs agents will require the creation of an online “customs agent academy” according to Mr Gove. It would be an ambitious undertaking at the best of times, and while it’s not entirely clear whether this represents 50,000 new jobs, retraining existing employees, or a combination of the two, it is especially challenging while the country is in the grip of a pandemic.

In addition, the EU has said that Britain must immediately start building customs posts in Northern Ireland. This is in response to Boris Johnson’s January announcement that he was preparing to impose full customs and border checks on all European goods entering the UK after Brexit. The Telegraph said at the time that Johnson was planning “a radical departure from pre-election ‘no deal’ planning that prioritised the smooth flow of goods into the UK from Europe. Whitehall departments have been told to prepare for imposing the full panoply of checks on EU imports to the UK.”

Implementing such a programme – which rather implies that a trade deal with the EU was not going to be forthcoming, even before coronavirus cramped negotiators’ style – will be challenging in the highly probable event that there are at least some lingering restrictions to mobility and with some form of social distancing in place come next January.

There have been suggestions that Britain should apply for an extension of the Transition Period, which would need to be done by the end of June, which is to say in eight weeks’ time. Former Tory cabinet minister Sir David Lidington, who was Theresa May’s deputy, thinks that a six-month extension is inevitable. Michael Gove, however has dismissed calls for an extension; he insists that it is “plain prudence” to adhere to the current timetable. Not since Gordon Brown’s flirtation with the concept has prudence been so carelessly dallied with.

I can perfectly understand that strict adherents to the cause of Brexit must be frustrated that Britain remains even now a member of the EU; I can appreciate that using COVID-19 as a reason for extending the transition period will be seen by many people as just another excuse for dragging our feet. I can see that many ardent Brexiteers will feel that even if a delay is agreed because of coronavirus, that will not be the end of it, there will be something else that pops up after that to further postpone Britain’s departure from the EU.

I can also see coronavirus having a terminal impact on the EU itself. The arrival of coronavirus in Europe was met, not by increased co-operation between member states of the EU, but by a collective raising of drawbridges. Britain, despite having been a proponent of increased border controls in the past, has kept its borders open to a much greater extent than the other 27 EU members. Self-interest, and a widening divide between Europe’s wealthier northern states and its poorer relations in the south, is pointing towards a financial crisis in the union that could contribute towards its ultimate demise as anything other than as a trading bloc.

Given that even some staunch Tory Brexiteers have accepted in the past that a no-deal departure from the EU would cause problems in the supply chain and impact the nation’s short-term prosperity, and that some of Brexit's benefits might not become apparent for another generation – Jacob Rees Mogg  suggested that it might take fifty years – hurtling toward a no-deal Brexit now does seem like a negligent policy of self-harm. If the EU comes out of the coronavirus mortally wounded as an institution, or at least significantly scaled back towards a more user-friendly trading alliance, Britain could retain the trading benefits of the union, but lose the add-ons that the Leave campaign wanted rid of and without the actual pain of leaving.

We are fortunate that Brexit did not happen in January this year. Road hauliers, supermarkets and government ministers all admitted last year that a no-deal Brexit would probably lead to delays in stock reaching the shops, and some shortages. The empty shelves we experienced in supermarkets a couple of months ago had more to do with excess demand and panic buying than it did with interruptions in the supply chain. Imagine how much worse matters would have been had the supply chain been interrupted or disrupted by new customs checks on imported goods?

Still, for those who enjoy invoking the War-time spirit, the possible introduction of rationing would have made their experience even more authentic. I wouldn’t rule it out come next January if Britain’s divorce from the EU is on the terms of no-deal. Mind you, French President Emmanuel Macron recently said (about the failure to reach agreement on an economic response to the pandemic), “What’s at stake is the survival of the European project.” If rifts that seemed to have been exposed become wider, then come January maybe there will be nothing for Britain to leave anyway.