Andy Richardson: Two small island nations – two very different Covid outcomes
It’s 11,683 miles from London to Wellington, New Zealand.
Kiwis make great wine, provided a home for The Lord of the Rings movies and adore rugby and cricket.
New Zealand has many similarities with Britain, despite having a population that’s roughly half the size of Greater London, at around five million.
Yet though the Queen is the head of state, locals drink tea and roast beef is consumed on Sundays, on the subject of Covid-19 New Zealand could not be more different. It locked down early, implemented an effective tracing policy and took decisive action at every stage. This week, New Zealand is expected to announce itself the first of the world’s wealthy nations to eliminate Covid-19. It has identified every case and those infected have recovered.
It helps, of course, that the nation has a decisive, humane and brilliant leader – just like Britain, oh, sorry, hang on. Jacinda Ardern and her colleagues are different to Britain’s political class. There have been few scandals, no dodgy advisors and positive results on all of the big calls.
Success has come at a price, of course. Tourism has been decimated and unemployment has soared in line with rates elsewhere in the world. But while Britain has no hope of a return to normal this year, New Zealand can look forward to partying soon. Its strategy of elimination, rather than the UK’s strategy of mitigation – actually, let’s call it what it was, ‘herd immunity’ – has led to a very small number of deaths.
Back home, the nation’s leading Winston Churchill Tribute Act, BoJo, is honing this week’s speeches. He’s thinking of Churchill with a twist: Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much messed up for so many by so few. He’ll use New Zealand as his example of how Britain is world beating – by referencing Eoin Morgan’s 2019 World Cup Cricket success and forgetting about Covid-19. Probably. Two small island nations – two very different Covid outcomes.
With many Brits now used to home working, the Government has been urged to look again at the £106 billion cost of HS2, which costs £300 million per mile. There’s little chance of that. Despite the widespread destruction of sensitive nature sites, the man in charge, Mark Thurston, has labelled the rail scheme ‘the biggest environment project in Britain’.
