🎧 Rating the Government on Covid

Episode summary: David talks to Bronwen Maddox, Director of the Institute for Government, about how well the Johnson government has performed over the past year of the pandemic. There have been some successes - the furlough scheme, vaccines - and plenty of failures - education policy, health outcomes. But which were the key choices? Who can claim the credit? And where does the blame really lie? Plus we discuss how much personality still matters in political decision-making. Talking Points: What has the government done well over the last year? - It got financial support to a lot of people, surprisingly quickly. - Building this infrastructure was inadvertent—it was for Universal Credit. Vaccines have been heralded as a success story; can the government really claim credit? - It has been funneling money to some of the groups that were successful. - The government did a good job in buying vaccines and choosing where to invest. - In the rollout, you get something analogous to test and trace. Much of this is being done through the…