AS THE TELEGRAPH'S TIM STANLEY ...

[Michael Grove]

  has so succinctly proposed ...

  "Coronavirus is proof that globalisation

   has left us dangerously vulnerable"

  ...and he goes on to say: "I wish I’d been louder before.

   The problem with being a critic of globalisation on the

   centre-Right is that it’s a lonely business: the moment 

   you suggest it’s not a good idea to ship our entire

   manufacturing base off to Wuhan, you’re branded a

   socialist. But the coronavirus has brought home two  

   painful realities. First, we are reliant on imports for key

   products, which leaves us vulnerable to external shocks

   (something poorer countries have known for years). The

   NHS’s main supplier of generic drugs, for instance, is

   now India, and India is already restricting exports.

   (Officials say there are currently no shortages and that

   the NHS has stockpiled.)

   The second reality is that we have ceded strategic

   advantage to China. Globalisation was supposed to

   make us securer by reducing our reliance on expensive

   domestic producers, but the downside is that we have

   integrated into the world economy a rising power that

   doesn’t play by our rules, something the coronavirus

   has illustrated horribly"  and as others have reported

   
   "A decision by Italian authorities to place 16 million

    people into coronavirus quarantine descended into

    chaos on Sunday night as dozens of flights from

    affected areas were permitted to land in Britain.

    More than a quarter of the population of Italy was

    placed on lockdown in a bid to stem the spread of

    the coronavirus after deaths in the country rose by

    a third in a single day."

                      Christopher Hope, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT ;

                      Sarah Knapton, SCIENCE EDITOR and Jamie Johnson

 

    Whilst Ambrose Evans-Pritchard sets the political tone

    by exclaiming that: "The world’s geopolitical order will

    be unrecognisable once Covid-19 has done its worst.

    Long-standing regimes will be badly compromised.

    Political systems that have never fully recovered from

    the Lehman crisis will suffer a second body blow.    

    Those  Western democratic governments that have

    been most complacent or incompetent will be torn to

    shreds by unforgiving electorates. Social media will see

    to that. Covid-19 is turning into a strategic contest

    between the social control model of China’s Communist

    Party and the unruly, free-spirited pluralism of the West.

    How that comparison plays out will shape the global

    order in the 21st Century. In this country, Brexit scarcely

    matters right now. Decimal points of GDP are irrelevant.

    Boris Johnson will be judged on whether or not his

    administration allows avoidable decimation of the

    elderly – and the not so elderly – and whether the

    National Health Service buckles in catastrophic

    institutional failure. 

 

..