key: cord-0701432-rszhcqm4
authors: Newton, Kenneth
title: Government Communications, Political Trust and Compliant Social Behaviour: The Politics of Covid‐19 in Britain
date: 2020-08-26
journal: Polit Q
DOI: 10.1111/1467-923x.12901
sha: 55a06f433b835082dc0b80f91b8d25119f4f0cfb
doc_id: 701432
cord_uid: rszhcqm4

It is commonly said that the lockdowns and social distancing necessary to control coronavirus pandemics will only work if the general population trusts its government, believes the information it provides, and has confidence in its policies. This article traces the British government’s record in providing information about its policies and performance, and compares this with the public’s use of the mainstream news media. It then considers how these two sources of information affected trust in government and public compliance with social distancing and lockdown rules. Lastly, it compares Covid‐19 with Brexit and draws conclusions about how beliefs and behaviour are formed when individuals are personally faced with a serious threat.

IT IS REASONABLE to assume that social compliance with the difficult and stressful behaviour required to stop the spread of diseases such as Covid-19 are dependent on the population's trust and confidence in the government that is imposing lockdown and social distancing rules. Based on its massive knowledge of public opinion and behaviour, this is what the Gallup Poll, for example, has to say about the matter.

People's trust in the medical advice and information they get from their government will be crucial in the coming days and weeks as the countries on the frontlines of COVID-19 outbreaks in Western Europe and the U.S. step up their mitigation strategies. Somewhat fortunately, before the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, substantial majorities of residents in Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Spain and the United States said they trust the medical advice and information they receive from their governments.

Gallup reports that 81 percent of the population in the UK in 2018 said they had a lot or some trust in the government's medical and health advice, and 18 per cent said they had not much or none. The comparable figures in Germany, the highest trust country, were 83 and 13 per cent, and in Italy, the lowest, 63 and 36 per cent. 1 How the British government has communicated with the public and what it has communicated have played a major part in determining how citizens have come to view their government and how they have behaved during the Covid-19 pandemic. But the evidence does not confirm the claim that trust in government is crucial or that compliance with lockdown behaviour is dependent upon this trust.

The evidence for these conclusions is presented in three main parts. The first considers the content of government communications, including the background context of a long tradition of secrecy in British government, the example the government set in its own behaviour, and its frequent claims that its policies were following the science. The second part turns to the role of the mainstream media in informing the public about the pandemic and the attention paid to the news by the public. The third part considers how the combination of government behaviour and media information caused opinion to swing from trust in the government to distrust, and how this led many to make up their own minds about how best to protect themselves and others from the disease.

Government information, lack of information, misinformation, and disinformation Secrecy A background factor in the official Covid-19 information campaign is a long-established tradition of secrecy in British government. This caused problems years before the onset of the pandemic. Experts informed us that flu and virus pandemics had occurred with increasing frequency since the Asian flu of 1957 and that we should expect another one sooner or later, probably sooner. As a result, three simulations were run to test the country's ability to deal with such a crisis and to make recommendations: Winter Willow (2007), Exercise Cygnus (2016) , and, in Scotland, Exercise Iris (2018). All found serious failings, and among their recommendations they picked out: the need to stockpile equipment; the need for close coordination between levels of government; the need to shield those most at risk in care homes; and the heavy demands of testing, tracking and isolating.

Little was known about Exercise Cygnus until it was leaked in 2020, but it seems that its publication was suppressed because it was 'too terrifying' for the public, partly because the chief medical officer at the time concluded that the NHS had clearly failed the Cygnus test. 2 In any case, care homes were not informed of its recommendations, so could not implement them in 2020. It seems that the government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) did not know about, or did not discuss the report in January or February. 3 Publication of reports like Cygnus might put pressure on governments to take action on their recommendations and provide information for those who need to know. Besides, lack of PPE and the high care home death rate both came back to bite the government and publication would have saved them trouble in the longer run.

Government secrecy had other consequences. Initially, the members SAGE and their expert views were confidential, so the wider world was unable to tell whether the government was actually following the science, as it claimed. Under pressure, it revealed SAGE membership and the group itself released records showing that there was sometimes disagreement about alternative courses of action, some heeded by the government, some not. Concern was expressed about the proper functioning of the committee when it was discovered that the Prime Minister's policy advisor, Dominic Cummings, and another political appointee of Number Ten, had attended its meetings. 4 When lockdown was delayed on the grounds that research showed the need to avoid lockdown fatigue, there was speculation about the nature and reliability of research used to justify inaction when earlier action would save lives.

Secrecy was also built into the emergency powers of the government to award contracts to companies without open tendering, sometimes with confidential commercial clauses, sometimes not divulged until after the event, and sometimes awarded to companies without the resources or experience to deliver services quickly and efficiently. 5 As John Denham puts it, 'Commercial confidentiality ensures minimal scrutiny'. 6 Minimal scrutiny has many possible consequences ranging from inefficiency to corruption and public distrust.

One of the most prominent features of the daily press briefings during the pandemic was the official announcement of daily Covid-19 deaths. Initially, these included care home figures, but these were then then omitted from the total. When it became clear from other sources that care home deaths were high and increasing, the government included the figures in the total once again, increasing them by a substantial amount. Not releasing the figures aroused suspicion and had a bigger impact on public opinion when it was realised how large they were. More distrust was aroused by government ministers failing to answer directly questions from the press and public during these press briefings. and contradictory. 7 In the first daily press meetings the government repeated that a primary objective was 'flattening the curve', a phrase that PR experts found unappealing and ineffective. On 16 March the Prime Minister announced that it would not be necessary to shut schools, yet on 20 March schools were shut until further notice. When the government started easing the lockdown, most people thought the new slogan, 'Stay alert', was meaningless and the regional governments of Wales and Scotland rejected it. When schools were partially re-opened, the government issued vague and confusing directives, and repeated the same mistake when shops followed suit and airport immigration officers had to enforce new quarantine rules. There were days of conflicting messages about the need to wear face masks in shops and public places. Lack of clarity frequently caused distraction from the main business of managing the crisis, and suggested a lack of thought and planning as well as a failure to master the basics of communication with the public. This added to a general feeling that the government was not handling things well.

The government broke its own rules. On the 3 March 2020 the government asked people not to shake hands, yet on the same day the Prime Minister stated that he was shaking hands with everyone. The first televised daily meetings with the press showed him flanked by medical advisors clearly breaking their two metre social distancing rule. When officials in England, Scotland, and abroad broke the lockdown rules, they resigned their official posts, but those close to Number Ten did not. Dominic Cummings' trip to Barnard Castle and Durham had a big impact (discussed below) on public opinion. Among Western political leaders the Prime Minister was one of the last to appear in public wearing a face mask (and only two days before Trump).

The government has made a point of emphasising that its policies followed the lead of science, backing its claim by flanking the PM and Cabinet ministers with scientific advisors at daily press meetings over the following weeks. Since Covid-19 was new, there was almost no science to follow about this specific form of the disease, but, and it is a big but, there was ample science in general about how to deal with coronavirus outbreaks-science that was well understood and widely available. That science said that early, decisive action was essential to prevent the disease spreading; a large stockpile of medical supplies and equipment was necessary; a clear plan of action was needed, preferably laid down in advance when there was calm and time to think carefully, as Winter Will, Cygnus and Iris had done; close coordination between key players; testing, tracing, and isolating the infected; a lockdown of the population; international cooperation; and a ban on travellers from hotspots abroad. Above all, the science emphasised that rapid, decisive, and early action was essential.

The government did not so much follow this science as ignore most of it. In spite of increasingly urgent warnings coming from the Chinese government, the World Health Organization (WHO), SAGE, and The Lancet, the weeks from February to mid-March were a period of indecision and inaction. Boris Johnson missed five consecutive emergency meetings of SAGE, earning him the nickname of the 'part-time Prime Minister' and being reported as 'missing in action'. Some 18 million people arrived in Britain by air in the three months before lockdown, and tourists disembarked from cruise ships from virus hotspots (and which were themselves virus hotspots), the great majority without testing and free to travel home and mix at will. All this was reported prominently in the press. Not generally known at the time, but exactly what the pandemic simulations had warned against, large numbers of older people were transferred out of hospitals-in order to clear beds for coronavirus patients -to care homes where they spread the disease among those most at risk.

As days, then weeks, passed, scientists and experts continued to repeat the urgent need for action, repeating the mantra of test, trace, isolate, and lockdown, all of which soon became common knowledge. The media reported the stark news coming out

of Italy and Spain, and what the Germans were doing to control the spread of the virus. In early March the Prime Minister announced his main weapons against this contagious and deadly disease: hand washing while singing 'Happy Birthday' and not touching your face. The government did not come out publicly with a plan of action until mid-March, but it was really a plan of inaction that failed to comply with the science: tracking and tracing was not to be attempted; testing was limited to those admitted to hospital; there was little attempt to build a stock of PPE; no evidence of a plan of action for the next weeks and months; no lockdown; schools were not closed; large gatherings were not banned; few travellers from abroad were tested and quarantined. Even though the risk was raised from moderate to high the Prime Minister gave vague, soft advice to stay at home for those with symptoms (though people without symptoms can be infectious), avoid unnecessary travel and contact with others, and avoid cruise ships if over seventy.

Expert scientific reaction was loud and widespread. Professor William Hanage, an epidemiologist at Harvard, wrote that he thought the Prime Minister's outline policy was satire when he first read it, an example of strange British humour. 8 Those who started social distancing and semi-isolation in the first week of March watched the daily press briefings with disbelief as the government continued to delay the inevitable.

When the national lockdown was announced on 23 March, the virus had more or less free rein for fifty-two days after the first infection was recorded on 1 February 2020. The UK was one of the last European countries to go into general lockdown, although by that time it had one of the highest daily rates of death and infection. Members of SAGE have calculated that the failure to lockdown earlier cost lives-perhaps as many as 20,000. A model devised for Channel 4's Dispatches programme estimated that a lockdown on 16 March in the UK might have saved 8,000 lives; four days earlier it might have saved 13,000. On 16 July the government's chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, told the science and technology committee of the House of Commons that SAGE had advised the government to start lockdown a week before it did.

A report of the National Audit Office states that the only central stockpile of PPE was designed for a flu epidemic, not the gowns and visors an official committee had recommended in 2019. Consequently, the volume of required PPE available fell far short of requirements listed by the committee of experts. 9 Of the 33 million respirator masks in the 2009 procurement, only 12 million were distributed. The government failed to explain what happened to the rest, except to say that limited demand for masks meant they were not handed out; another puzzle, given that demands for masks and other PPE were repeated loudly and often.

The three pandemic simulations discussed above were clear about the need to shield vulnerable staff and residents in care homes. On 25 February the government released its guidance notes for community care and residential care homes. Face masks were not needed, visiting not banned, and there was no need to do anything different because 'It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home . . . will become infected.' 10 The document was withdrawn on 13 March but around 25,000 people were discharged from hospitals into care homes between 17 March and 15 April and it is not known how many were tested for Covid-19. Until late April neither staff nor residents were tested routinely unless they had symptoms, but when tested later, it was found that 42 per cent of staff and residents without symptoms were positive. Furthermore, many staff move between care homes carrying infection with them and the general underfunding of care homes has left them especially vulnerable to infectious disease. 11 Moving the scientific goalposts When the stocks of PPE were first distributed, some equipment with a use-by date of 2016 had a sticker placed over this information with a new date of 2020. 12 Similarly, care workers were informed that masks from the government stockpile that were past their use-by date were deemed fit for use by official sources. 13 Medical staff reacted strongly against the government telling them that they should use the PPE more than once and that full length medical gowns were not necessary, both contrary to the accepted safety practices. 14 The timing and sequencing of lifting the lockdown was another problem, starting with the first efforts to open schools when the government broke its own rules for starting the process. 15 The SAGE assessment said it 'cannot be clear' that opening up schools would not lead to an increase in infections'. 16 Independent SAGE put it more bluntly: schools should not re-open on June 1, because there is no clear evidence that it was safe. 17 In any case, lifting lockdown and keeping the rate of infection low depends on rigorous and effective testing, tracking, and isolating, but tracking and isolating were still experiencing teething problems. Furthermore, the absence of a mobile app limited the ability to track extensively. The chief scientific advisor urged caution: the country did not meet the WHO's six criteria for lifting lockdown measures, and the UK was placed 163 on a list of 168 countries in terms of its readiness to exit lockdown. 18 It is rightly said that when you cross politics with science, what you get is politics. 19 However, it is not clear what exactly happened during the Covid pandemic and research will probably reveal an inevitably complicated and muddled process. Did politicians try to follow a science that was wrong, or did they pick the most convenient recommendations from conflicting advice? Was groupthink involved, or maybe the scientists provided what the politicians wanted to hear? Or, more likely, that scientists recommended options that were practicable, given the parlous state of the NHS, the public health system, and the mindset of their political masters? 20 There are bound to be delays in making decisions and then again in implementing them. Any and all of these are possible and must remain open for any enquiry into the handling of the pandemic. What is clear now is that in spite of its frequent claims, government policy did not, for whatever reason, follow the general science of pandemic control so far as testing, tracking, isolating, lockdown, protecting the elderly and others most at risk, and those frontline workers who depended on a reliable supply of PPE. And, as discussed below, many members of the public knew this.

Secrecy, lack of information, unclear and ineffective messaging, setting a bad example, and ignoring the science all played their part in the course of the pandemic, but more important for the political attitudes and behaviour of the population was official misinformation. In an era of fake news, conspiracy theories, alternative facts, and propaganda, a distinction must be drawn between information, misinformation, and disinformation. By information is meant factual statements that are consistent with the best available evidence at the time; disinformation is incorrect but provided in good faith without intent to deceive; misinformation is incorrect and intended to deceive. Government misinformation was a frequent occurrence during the British pandemic.

It started on 31 January when the EU began planning for the bulk purchasing of PPE. Britain could have joined this effort but declined, saying it was making its own arrangements. It then changed its story saying that it had not received EU emails inviting Britain to participate, although British officials had attended EU meetings. A senior Whitehall official then said that the decision had been political, but retracted the statement the next day.

In the early days, several government officials went on record, stating that one aim of their policy was to create herd immunity. When it was realised that this would might entail millions of infections and up to half a million deaths, it was officially denied that herd immunity was ever part of the policy. If there is any truth in this denial, it rests on a hair-splitting distinction between policy and an inevitable consequence of policy. 21 The widespread criticism of the government for its failure to deliver adequate supplies of PPE provoked it into making false claims about the amount distributed and the imminence of fresh supplies. One large shipment of equipment was said to be arriving, but seemed not have been distributed three

weeks later. Another consignment was claimed to be arriving on a Monday, when it was actually going to be ordered on that day. When part of it arrived a few days later some items were found unfit for use. On another occasion, the Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, announced that that a massive effort had resulted in over a billion items of PPE being delivered. It later transpired that the billion included many items not usually thought of as PPE (such as body bags, clinical waste containers and cleaning equipment) and surgical gloves were counted singly, not in pairs. The figure of a billion was an overestimation by many millions. Covid testing produced another batch of misinformation. Under intense pressure, the number of daily tests increased a little, until on 29 March the Health Secretary announced that a 10,000 target had been met. The fact check organisation Full Fact finds no data to support the claim and the figure confuses the number of tests and the number of people tested. 22 Since testing is a difficult job, the same person may be tested two or three times to get it done properly. A goal of 100,000 tests a day by the end of April was then announced and repeated frequently, although it provoked much scepticism. When the day arrived, it was claimed that the target had been exceeded by a substantial margin, but it turned out that the figure included tests that had been put in the post, though whether they had actually been carried out, returned, or processed was unknown. The next day recorded 85,000 actual tests. The nature of testing figures caused the head of the UK Statistics Authority to write letters to the Health Secretary on 11 May and 2 June, the second saying that the government's aim 'seems to be to show the largest possible number of tests, even at the expense of understanding'. 23 The official daily figures for Covid deaths released in the government's press briefings are also a matter of doubt and dispute. There are different ways of counting Covid mortality, but the government's highest daily figure was 980, recorded on 8 April 2020. The Office of National Statistics reports that the real figure that day was 1,445 and for twenty-two consecutive days between 2 and 23 April it never dipped below 1,000. 24 Some of the discrepancy is explained by the difference between deaths with Covid on the death certificate (the government's way of counting) and the larger, but more realistic figure of excess deaths. Even so, the figures were not the whole truth for some weeks. (Initially, the daily count had included care home deaths, but that practice was dropped, until it became clear that the figures were high and increasing. When they incorporated again into the figures the totals rose substantially.)

One of the more puzzling events occurred when Boris Johnson caught the virus, went into intensive care, but while there was announced to be in an optimistic mood and still in charge of government. Being in intensive care and still in charge of government seemed unlikely, the more so when Dominic Raab, the de facto deputy, admitted that he had barely been in touch with the Prime Minister. Shortly after, a press release said the PM had recovered enough to be able to sit up in bed. It is not clear how someone can be in good spirits and running the government one day, and the next day, improved enough to sit up in bed. The episode is of little importance in itself, which makes it even more difficult to understand why it required confusing and apparently contradictory PR treatment. Perhaps the staff at Number Ten thought that news about the Prime Minister flat on his back and totally incapacitated was bad publicity.

Doubt ranging from scepticism to disbelief of government communications was further encouraged by pronouncements made by the Prime Minister. He claimed early on that the NHS could cope well with the pandemic, even when the service itself had warned that it would struggle with a normal bout of winter flu and stated 'we've got a fantastic NHS, we will give them all the support that they need, we will make sure that they have all preparations, all the kit that they need for us to get through it.' 25 At the daily Downing Street press conference on 19 March, he repeated that 'We're guided very much by the science' and 'the next twelve weeks could turn the tide of this disease', adding that he was absolutely confident it was possible to 'send the virus packing in this country', when the evidence of other countries further advanced than Britain said otherwise. Exactly twelve weeks later, a further 1,266

people tested positive and the official death rate for that day was 151. 26 Johnson had claimed that the UK would have a world beating tracking and tracing programme, but the app was delayed and then abandoned. On 2 June he announced that 'This country is now testing more than virtually any other country in Europe', but Full Fact finds that 'The UK appears to be testing fewer people than in Russia. But there isn't enough data on this to determine for sure where the UK places, and the UK's data isn't particularly comparable with other countries.' 27

The British public took close interest in Covid-19 from the start. The first few deaths in Europe and the USA provoked a jump in interest in news about the pandemic that spread to about half the population by 31 January. Four Populus surveys from 20 March to 10 April recorded a record breaking 98 per cent of the population noticing stories about the virus. 28 Most were paying much more attention to trustworthy sources of news and drawing their own conclusions from it. Typically in times of crisis, the British people turn to BBC News because it is the most trusted source of information in the country, with a rating far higher than the government or politicians. The Guardian was the most trusted newspaper, but even the Conservative-leaning national press often took the government to task for its shortcomings, so the public was far from dependent on official government press releases.

The mainstream media covered the pandemic in Britain and abroad extensively, and in some detail. Covid-19 was headline or front page news for many weeks, with the press reporting government successes and failures, and investigating and correcting government misinformation. Consequently, the public was well informed in general about the pandemic and how the government was dealing with it. A YouGov Covid tracker poll compares how well people in twenty-two countries thought their government was handling coronavirus: by 29 May the UK sample ranked their country bottom of the international table. 29 Another YouGov poll shows that the British believed that that no other country in the study, America excepted, had performed worse than Britain. 30 The population is often accused of being politically ignorant; these survey results suggest otherwise.

The evidence is that people make up their own minds about subjects that are of personal relevance and about which they have personal experience and knowledge. 31 It also shows that people know what news sources they trust and distrust, that they know when they are being misled about issues of firsthand experience and relevance. They can spot the politicians who do not answer questions put to them, especially when they do it daily over months of press meetings. This is not to say that they necessarily make the right, logical, or sensible decisions, or that they master the details of political issues, only that they have a general understanding of matters of first-hand experience and importance to them and make up their own minds accordingly.

The combination of unreliable government information, counter-balanced by different information from the mainstream news media, plus the readiness of the population to make up its own mind about issues of personal, first-hand relevance, had a decisive influence on trust in the government and compliance with social distancing and lockdown rules.

Times of national crisis are often accompanied by an initial rally-round-the flag effect on public mood, followed by a gradual decline of political trust and confidence as the crisis develops and its costs emerge. Public opinion in the USA about the Korean and Vietnam wars, for example, followed this pattern, in both cases disillusionment growing in direct proportion to the increase in military casualties and deaths. The same occurred in the UK when support for the government and trust in political leaders was widespread at first, but declined as the pandemic developed.

From the end of January 2020, government approval climbed steadily from 30 per cent

to a peak of 52 per cent on 23-23 March, when it fell steeply to 32 per cent by the first week of June. On 11 March 2020, 72 per cent thought the government was handling the crisis very or somewhat well; by 5 June it was 39 per cent. In mid-January, 42 per cent thought Johnson was doing well as Prime Minister. This climbed steeply in the last two weeks of March to 66 per cent and then fell more steeply over the next three weeks to 43 per cent. 32 By the end of April two-thirds of the population thought that the government had acted too late in imposing stricter lockdown measures. 33 Similarly, trust in the government to provide accurate pandemic information fell from 67 to 48 per cent between 10 April and 21 May, while the percentages for news organisations rose from 38 to 48 per cent, and those for scientists, doctors, and experts rose from 83 to 88 per cent. 34 By the end of May, the Conservatives were, in the words of a YouGov poll, taking a hammering. 35 More people were reporting that they thought the government weak, incompetent, untrustworthy, and cared only about a select few. By the end of June, more people thought Keir Starmer would make a better Prime Minister than Johnson; 51 per cent said the government had under-responded to the pandemic and its net approval rating for handling the crisis fell further to minus 10 per cent. The general feeling was that too little had been done and too late, and then by July the view of almost two-thirds of the population was that lockdown was being eased too quickly. 36 By the beginning of July, Johnson's net approval rating had fallen to minus 6 per cent, after reaching a high of plus 40 per cent in the second week of May. 37 Public opinion often takes some time to adjust to new circumstances, with small fluctuations around an accumulation of incidents, followed by a major swing of opinion precipitated by one or two controversial ones. In the case of the Vietnam War, American support fell slowly in line with the rise in body bags, but fell sharply and permanently immediately after the Tet Offensive, mainly because the public came to realise that it had been deceived about the power of the Viet Cong by their government. 38 Similarly, in the UK trust in the government began to slip away in late March as the death toll from coronavirus rose, but the announcement of 40,000 deaths and Dominic Cummings' trips to Durham and Barnard Castle tipped the decline into a steep slide.

Conservative voters were most likely to break ranks over the Cummings scandal. After a week of news headlines and calls for Cummings to resign, the Prime Minister said that the country should 'move on' from the controversy, but almost a fifth of Tory voters disagreed. Two-thirds of the country believed that the PM was wrong to support Cummings, including 45 per cent of Conservative voters, and almost half the country said they had lost respect for the government for supporting him. 39 In other countries, the politicians with reputations intact or enhanced are notable for their plain and honest speaking and frank discussion of the difficulties of policy making, for facing problems squarely, and treating the public as adults. They are disproportionately women, including Jacinda Ardern, Angela Merkel, Sanna Marin, Mette Frederiksen, and Nicola Sturgeon, but also Anthony Fauci, a leading member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and New York State Governor, Andrew Cuomo, among others. By comparison, British ministers-almost exclusively men-have lacked their qualities and failed to engage the trust of the general public. The government seemed to believe that it was necessary to give out optimistic and upbeat messages; the public wanted honest speaking that confronted reality.

Large shifts in political opinion during the Covid pandemic were not unexpected, but their consequences for social behaviour were unanticipated.

Most predictions about social behaviour during lockdowns assumed that widespread compliance with the rules would require high levels of trust in government and confidence in its policies and ability to deliver them, especially when patience ran out and lockdown fatigue set in. None of this applies to the UK. As ever, there were those who did not comply: some thought that the pandemic was fake or a conspiracy; some older citizens were unable or unwilling to change their settled social patterns; and many younger adults took no notice. The 18-24 age group was found to have the highest levels of infection, but the lowest likelihood and willingness of isolate, if told to. 40 The great majority of people, however, complied with social distancing, shielding, and lockdown rules; some took the decision days or even weeks before the government acted. When it came to easing lockdown restrictions, as mentioned above, the majority of the population thought the government was moving too quickly.

Why do we find a low trust and sceptical population socially isolating and distancing itself, sometimes before the government told them to and often continuing to do so after the rules were eased? Because, as argued above, they used different sources of information and made up their own minds about how to protect themselves and those around them. Three-quarters of the population believed that they could personally influence whether they were infected, and that not following the rules was the most important factor in spreading the disease. 41 Most gave more priority to health than the economy. Trust in the government and confidence in its policies is sometimes not essential, it seems, for public compliance with rules to protect personal and public interests. If the crisis concerns the personal interests of an individual, or their personal safety and that of their friends and family, they are likely to weigh up the risks and take what action they think is appropriate, irrespective of what they think of the media or the government, or both.

In this respect, government information about Covid-19 and Brexit was treated in a different way by the public. Brexit is an abstract and remote issue involving complex matters of national identity, international affairs, and trading relations in the future. Covid is literally an in-your-face matter of illness and death in the here and now. Views about Brexit were ruled by the heart; Covid was a matter for calculating personal risk using the head. As Samuel Johnson might have said: 'Depend on it, sir, when a person knows they are threatened by a deadly disease, it sharpens the mind wonderfully'. Another way of putting this is to say trust is what we resort to when we have little or no control over our affairs or little or no information to help us make up our minds. Then we must rely on others. Little is known even now about Covid-19-except that it is a deadly virus that anyone can catch. The risk of infection might be small, but the price to pay for any given individual might be final. The calculation requires balancing the probabilities against the risk, and if the risk is serious illness or death, the calculation is heavily weighted on the side of caution, the more so if friends, family and, perhaps, unknown others are involved. No one knows what the probabilities and costs of Brexit will be for any given individual in Britain, so we must, in the last analysis, trust or distrust the judgment of others or follow our own gut feelings. Being told that we will have an extra £350 million a week for the NHS by leaving the EU, is one thing, but being told that it is safe to send your children back to school when this involves risk of serious disease is another.

It is widely assumed that compliance with social distancing and lockdown rules require a trust in government, confidence in its policies and its ability to deliver them, plus a belief that its information can be relied upon. However, the British public generally observed the rules, despite a major decline of trust, confidence, and belief, in the space of just a few weeks. It did so because it had alternative and more trusted sources of information in the mainstream news media, as well as the non-government expert opinion that the media reported. The public paid close attention to the sources of information it trusted, especially the BBC, and consequently, it was quite well informed about how the British government was performing compared with other countries. Its initial rally-round-the flag attitudes gradually changed to become less trusting of government information, and less confident about its performance. News of 40,000 deaths and Dominic Cummings' trips to Durham and Barnard Castle precipitated a steep slide in government approval.

Perhaps most important, there is evidence that public opinion is less susceptible to influence by the government or the media, or other sources of information, on matters of personal importance and impact. Covid-19 posed a real, immediate, and personal threat to health and life, and hence people generally formed their own opinions about it, how the government had handled it, and what action they should take to protect themselves. This makes the pandemic a different sort of political matter compared with Brexit, for example, which is a more remote and abstract issue for the future. If Brexit has a strong positive or negative impact on the bread-and-butter issues of daily life, we may see the public shift from its ideological approaches to the referendum campaign to a more Covid-19 mode of response.

Kenneth Newton is Professor Emeritus, University of Southampton 

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Early effects of Covid-19 on online consumption

COVID-19: government handling and confidence in health authorities

Europeans think UK has managed COVID-19 poorly

Surprising News: How the Media Affect-And Do Not Affect Politics

Spike in Britons thinking government acted "too late" to address virus but confidence in the NHS continues to grow

Less than half of Britons now trust the government to provide accurate information on the pandemic

Voting intention: Con 45%, Lab 35%

Perceptions of lockdown timings -too fast, too slow, or about right?

Boris Johnson approval rating

The Power of the News

The Uncensored War

Public Opinion on coronavirus

England's coronavirus infection rate significantly reduced before lockdown was eased, study finds

Elderly people and res ponses to Covid-19 in 27 countries

Public attitudes and the management of the COVID-19 crisis: the importance of personal responsibility