Addressing a massive television audience of 27 million people Monday evening — Britain’s population is just shy of 68 million — Prime Minister Boris Johnson took a page from Winston Churchill’s famed speeches during the Second World War.
The global coronavirus pandemic, Johnson said, is “the greatest crisis this country has faced for decades.” The former mayor of London then outlined an effective lockdown that will allow Britons to take one walk per day but require them otherwise to remain at home, except to purchase critical goods such as food and medicine. Around 350 Britons have died from the virus so far, with thousands more infected. But considering the coronavirus’s relatively long incubation period of between five and 14 days, and the population density of British towns and cities, both numbers will rise significantly.
So, as Johnson put it, “if too many people become seriously unwell at one time, the [National Health Service] will be unable to handle it — meaning more people are likely to die, not just from coronavirus, but from other illnesses as well.”
The challenge is that Britain’s health system lacks the capacity in beds, ventilators, and other capabilities that are needed to handle this epidemic.
But Johnson’s somber tone on Monday was also striking for its stark contrast with his normal jovial eccentricity. It was here that the prime minister emulated his hero, Churchill.
Johnson has lectured frequently on Churchill’s premiership, even writing a 2014 book, The Churchill Factor. As the British media noted at the time, that book sought to draw comparisons between Johnson and his hero. Johnson’s description of Churchill as “eccentric, over the top,” was too close to home. “There were too many [Conservative parliamentarians] who thought of him as an unprincipled opportunist … His enemies detected in him a titanic egotism.”
Such things have been said abundantly about Johnson throughout his career. Regardless, there’s no question that Johnson’s speech was modeled on Churchill.
First, there was the commitment to blunt honesty. This was most clear in Johnson’s warning that this is “the greatest crisis this country has faced for decades” and that “the way ahead is hard, and it is still true that many lives will sadly be lost.”
Then, there was Johnson’s assertion that “we will come through it stronger than ever.”
Here we see the example of Winston Churchill’s speeches from 1940, as Britain faced a looming invasion from Nazi Germany. It’s a similar flow in warning of hard times, acceptance of losses to come, and inevitable victory.
Take Churchill’s September 1940 pledge that Britons are “a people who will not flinch or weary of the struggle, hard and protracted though it will be, but that we shall rather draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival, and of a victory won not only for ourselves, but for all — a victory won not only for our own time, but for the long and better days that are to come.”
Yes, the stakes today are not the existential ones of the Second World War. But it is true that Britain’s population, especially its elderly and ill, may suffer greatly if drastic steps are not taken to control the virus. So, the Churchill example was not an inopportune one for Johnson to adopt.
