Here in the UK our world has been turned upside down in the last month. The sinister coronavirus Covid-19, which originated in the wet meat markets of Wuhan in November and has then spread from Asia to other continents, most notably, to Europe, the Americas and Africa, has infected by today more than 1,434,426 and killed more than 82,220. In the UK alone there are 55,242 recorded infections and 6,159 deaths. Because of delayed testing the amount of infections is much higher. One third of the world’s population is undergoing various stages of lockdown, with international travel suspended, the economy in freefall, massive injections of state money pouring in to support private businesses, while on the front line health workers battle to save lives without adequate personal protection, delayed testing equipment, insufficient number of beds and respirators and no vaccine available to cure the disease before next year.
In the UK, because we are all affected to one degree or another by the pandemic, there is a sense of solidarity and equality in society to a greater extent than before. That may help us live through it in the short run, but social tension and real economic hardship may increase in the months that follow if there is no visible reduction in the number of infections and deaths. In order to maintain social cohesion, the government may even invite the opposition parties to join. We do not know how long this danger will last and whether our health, our economy and our personal sanity will survive. But if most of us come out of this at the other end alive and economically active it will still be a different world from the one we inhabited just a month ago.
Firstly, the government is likely to go for an exit strategy on the new social controls on social distancing only gradually with the option of enforcing them again in case the casualty and infection rates rise again. In the UK we are likely eventually to see our original freedom of movement restored even if we have to wait for the eventual vaccine early next year, but in other, more authoritarian so-called “democracies”, like Russia, India, Egypt, Turkey or Hungary the emergency legislation could remain in force for many years. If those governments had proved incompetent, they could face considerable unrest and even revolution.
2/ However, the radical economic measures taken by governments, including the 80% job guarantees, the tax and mortgage holidays, the nationalisation of rail and airlines, could remain in force for longer as the government supervises the recovery of a fragmented economy. In Europe and America $8 trillion worth of state loans and tax holidays have been promised to business. The public will want to see a new post-virus UK economy without the economic austerity and social inequalities of the past. A form of coalition government, state control of many industries and services and a planned centralized economy could stay in force for a few years more. In fact the governing Conservative Party may split over when and how this new centrally managed economy should be dismantled. This may cause a new election and a Labour Party committed to maintaining a planned central economy in order to maintain the more egalitarian and socially cohesive aspects of the crisis, including a higher taxation rate fairly distributed between the more and the less wealthy.
3/ The health service budget is likely to replace military spending as the main priority of the government in the UK and in most Western countries. Protection against viruses will replace protection against missiles as the primary concern of security as predicted 5 years ago by Bill Gates. The health industry workers and international research scientists will form the new elite of society and the new media celebrities.
4/ Second only to the health service will be concern over constant modernisation of information technology, accessible broadband, artificial intelligence and defence of cyberspace. Increasingly decisions will be made at video conference meetings within government bodies and commercial companies, both nationally and internationally. More employees will work online from home. IT experts, especially in the field of security, will replace the current dominant role of accountants on company boards.
5/ The need for commuter and international travel will be reduced and airlines and transport companies are likely to be used more for personal recreation and tourism rather than for business travel.
6/Nevertheless, border restrictions may be retained to ensure no transmission of an epidemic from country to country.
7/ Education at school and at university level will be more reliant on IT skills and online individual teaching.
8/ The high street will wither away unless it becomes an entertainment hub as well as a shopping centre; retail shops without online sales will become obsolete.
9/ Future governments would be wise to acknowledge the role of manual labour in maintaining the health service, the care industry, refuse collection, strategic industries and agriculture by ensuring them a decent level of income and social status.
10/ The current reduction worldwide in the use of transport and industry will bring a welcome pause to global warming but the need for reindustrialization and the continued challenge to climate control by the United states, Russia and Brazil could undermine any gains from that pause.
11/ With the onset of world recession and the growing threat of the coronavirus in poorer third world countries with limited medical resources and lack of adequate urban space for social distancing, the resulting Covid-19 pandemic could be accompanied by major famine and the increasing pressure from economic and health refugees seeking out a safer new life in the more prosperous countries of Asia, Europe and North America. Consequently, interventionist international cooperation, such as the proposed World bank $160 billion loan to poorer countries next month, and a moratorium on third world debt, is likely to grow at global and regional level despite the challenge of nationalism.
12/ Globalism will be less reliant on uninhibited free trade and more on centrally managed international strategies. International summits like the recent G20 based in Saudi Arabia are likely to be managed by world leaders attending through online conference calls and will be as concerned with health, education and information technology as with the economy.
13/ Faced with hostility from Russia, China and the United States, the European Union will struggle to retain its relevance. It has to challenge the nationalist agenda in each country, agree to the issue of coronabonds to supports the weaker Mediterranean economies, maintain outside EU borders against newer migrants and take a lead in ensuring a resilient health service fighting these and future epidemics in each country. Otherwise it will die.
14/ Because of continued US withdrawal from the role of a world leader under its current president, the XXI century is likely to be a Chinese century. China, having survived the coronavirus epidemic so quickly, continues to supply medical expertise and supplies throughout the world, and gives crucial low interest loans to third world countries increasingly struggling with the virus. Chinese style intensified social control, cybersecurity and lack of human rights will increasingly become the model for the new world order.
15/ The Western liberal democracies will no longer be the universal model for development and will be under constant challenge from authoritarian regimes and nationalist movements.
It will all make a brave new world.
Published also on You Tube 08/04/20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3Hu_g0YcVs&lc=Ugy_bBgMm3DSfirGX2F4AaABAg
