Thread by @GoodwinMJ

How will #coronavirus impact on politics? The short answer -the honest answer- is that we do not know. But we can still ask some questions that will help to organise our thinking. Here are a few for starters ...

/thread

Will the combined political, economic and health crises deliver another body blow -and perhaps a fatal one- to globalisation and the liberal world order, which has already been in retreat for much of the past decade?

Or will it provide a new raison d'être for liberalism, reviving public support for individual freedom and the argument that amid large-scale global challenges like pandemics and climate change the only possible future is a multilateral one?

Will the crisis and its fallout, which is already hitting low-income workers hardest, exacerbate the global populist backlash against incompetent and selfish elites -with senators selling stocks with insider information becoming a symbol of the latter?

Or will the arrival of a new 'external enemy', the first serious global threat since the end of the Cold War, focus minds on the need to build cross-class solidarity? Will a common enemy stop liberalism from turning in on itself?

Will the crisis sharpen the already growing divides between the wealthy winners of globalisation -who have the economic security to flee into isolation, private healthcare and find shelter from the worst effects- and the left behinders who do not?

Will the bailouts and fiscal injections pave the way for a return of big government and economic interventionism, perhaps even a 'post-COVID' consensus that leaves more space for the state and less room for free market capitalism?

Will the expected shrinking of the American economy by 24% in the second quarter --which is two and a half times the largest drop recorded in 1958-- combined with the return of unemployment rates not seen since the Great Recession, demolish Donald Trump's re-election hopes?

Or will much talk about a 'Chinese virus' and the need to close borders remind us all that -at its core- politics is often less about lofty appeals to humanitarianism and more about the attribution of blame?

Will the sudden arrival of a common threat end the escalating political polarisation in America, and repair a divided Brexit Britain, or will the crisis become merely the latest issue to be seen through a partisan lens?

Will yet another crisis in the Eurozone -which is forecast to shrink between 10-15% through June- prove to be the final straw as exasperated voters, especially in the south, start to question not only the economic advantages but whether solidarity really exists?

Or will Europe's north-south divides over redistribution and east-west divides over social liberalism finally give way for the integrationist and economic reforms that would be needed to turn the EU and Eurozone into a more stable and sustainable project?

Will the crisis accelerate a loss of public trust in experts and media, which has been one of the touchstones of our populist age?

Or, instead, will it restore public confidence in our experts as politicians are forced to defer to their medical and scientific expertise?

Will the crisis exacerbate already visible intergenerational tensions between the 'Boomers and Zoomers' (Baby Boomers and Generation Z), with partying spring-breakers becoming a symbol of a social settlement that has lost any sense of moral obligation and responsibility?

Or will the sharp generational divides in the degree of suffering and fatalities fuel a renaissance, in our already ageing societies, of greater cross-generational cooperation, support and mutual respect?

Will social-distancing and the even more draconian measures to follow encourage increasingly individualistic Western societies to ‘hunker down’ even more, pushing them into atomisation and reviving fears about a collapse of social capital?

Or do the millions of new Whatsapp groups that are turning strangers into friends, and the outpouring of volunteering, signal a much needed revival of communitarianism and civic culture?

We will not have answers to these questions and others for many years, much like it was impossible to forecast the political effects of the Great Recession in the immediate shadow of the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008

It is only now, more than a decade on from that earlier crisis, that we are able to stand back and survey the landscape. What will the landscape look like in 2030? We don't know.

Ends/

A few thoughts from my latest e-mail:
mailchi.mp/7c47b3a8c77d/t…

Now in long form @SpecCoffeeHouse

spectator.co.uk/article/will-c…