Covid-19: Boris Johnson, the counterexample

"World" editorial. He had not prepared the country for a pandemic, he failed to provide timely masks and tests and fueled fear and confusion by sending contradictory messages. However, 66% of the voters have a good opinion of him, 58% of them approve the action of his government and 50% are even ready to vote for his party. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is going through the Covid-19 crisis with insolent popularity, making Emmanuel Macron fade with envy.

The propensity of the British to give their leaders the benefit of the doubt when the French welcome with suspicion, even anger, the slightest statement from their president or their prime minister, speaks volumes about the eternal singularity of our neighbors. across the Channel, a mixture of loyalty, composure and superiority complex. The contrast also highlights the propensity of the French to disparage, whether it targets their leaders or themselves. Faced with the pandemic, no less than 66% of the inhabitants of France believe that the executive has "Not been up to it", according to an Odoxa poll. But they are hardly less numerous – 61% – to say the same of their fellow citizens, probably targeting the lack of civility "of the others".

Amazing phlegm

No one fully understands, in the UK itself, why Boris Johnson remains so popular when, with 40,000 dead according to official statistics, the country has the worst mortality in Europe, especially in retirement homes. Long nonchalant, the Prime Minister still boasted at the beginning of March of shaking hands with the sick, he took a vacation when the epidemic reached Europe and dried up five crisis meetings. The decontainment plan he exposed on Sunday, May 10, was so confused that some announcements had to be denied the next day. A barrage of criticism followed, from both the Labor opposition and the Conservatives. For the British, there is no doubt: their government has handled the crisis worse than all European governments, including France, that is to say. Only the American cousins ​​did worse.

Beyond the nationalism that Mr. Johnson knows how to flatter, beyond the confidence maintained in secular institutions whose queen embodies the sustainability, beyond the general veneration in which the British of all opinions hold the National Service health care (NHS) free, conquest of the post-war period, the “Boris paradox” on the coronavirus is due to the political calendar. The Prime Minister does not come out of the jerky of the "yellow vests" or the battle over pensions, but from an electoral triumph supposed to free his fellow citizens from their fever on Brexit.

There is nothing to say that the apparent complacency of the British will resist a deconfinement that promises to be bumpy. But for the time being, their astonishing phlegm can only give food for thought to their immediate neighbors, these French who hold their leaders no more in esteem than their fellow men, in other words themselves. For the government, it is a message of demand, rigor and transparency, if it wants to live up to the expectations of the French. For the latter, it is a reminder of the exceptional nature of the crisis, against a vain and paralyzing self-deprivation, an inferiority complex which risks delaying the exit from the collective nightmare that is the Covid-19.