A monumental state effort will be required post-Covid, but these Tories are too wedded to ideology to provide it
You’re gonna need a bigger boat.
Boris Johnson ought to know that iconic line well enough; after all, it comes from Jaws, and in pre-pandemic times he always used to praise the pig-headed mayor in that movie for keeping shark-infested beaches open come what may. Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned, I suppose. But thanks arguably in part to Johnson’s own failure to shut down quickly enough last year, his government now faces a monumental post-Covid challenge. To tackle the very long tail of this pandemic, Britain will need a bigger boat – or rather, a bigger state – for years to come.
