EDITORIAL: Things are really looking bleak for the United Kingdom which, after achieving the dubious distinction of boasting the highest coronavirus death rate in Europe, has just recorded the steepest Gross Domestic Product (GDP) collapse of any major economy as its output shrank by 20.4 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Since British GDP also shrank by 2.2 percent in the first quarter, and technically a recession is two straight quarters of negative growth, it is now officially suffering from its worst recession since it started keeping records, which says a lot about the Boris Johnson government's handling of the coronavirus and everything related to it. The problem started with the initial state of denial that London was in even as the rest of Europe began locking down to contain the spread of the coronavirus. And since it only reluctantly followed suit when it was clearly too late, it had to implement a harsher lockdown than other countries and for much longer. As a result shops, restaurants and especially the crucial services sector had to be completely shut down for far longer than anybody could afford, and GDP simply collapsed taking away hundreds of thousands of jobs with it. The long closure of schools, which was ordered far too late in the day to begin with, has also forced a significant number of working parents to give up their jobs and tend to their children at home.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has made no bones about the fact that the growth crisis is snowballing into a full blown jobs crisis and many more people can expect to be laid off soon enough, especially after the government's huge job subsidy programme ends in October; even though he did blame the whole thing on "something that is unprecedented" and "a very difficult and uncertain time" rather than the government's handling of it. Yet however difficult things seem right now there are signs that the worst of the GDP collapse might already be over since the economy grew by 8.7 percent month-on-month in June, even though nobody should get the impression that everybody who lost their jobs will find them again. That is especially so since the threat of a second wave of the coronavirus in the UK hasn't yet disappeared. Should that happen, and anything that is being slowly reopened now has to be locked down all over again, the impact on growth, jobs and incomes will be too grim to even speculate. Since this pandemic has pushed millions of people across the world out of their jobs and compromised their homes and their children's education, its effects could well last a whole generation. And countries like Great Britain, which have giant economies and more resources and better infrastructure than most countries in the world, could well end up suffering the most.

All this seems like a different world when watching the news from Pakistan, where a combination of wise policy, responsible people and pure good luck has kept the virus in check and things are fast returning to normal, even though we did suffer something of a scare just a few months ago when healthcare facilities were in danger of being overrun by fresh cases all the time. Perhaps the situation is still very different in countries like the UK for them to take a leaf out of Pakistan's book and experiment with smart lockdowns of their own, but they will have to come up with some sort of innovative policy that enables the government to take care of all the unemployed and allows the Bank of England to keep businesses solvent enough for at least a decent number of jobs to remain intact. There are serious lessons in Britain's sudden and rather steep fall from grace not just for its government but for all counties around the world, especially those like Pakistan that are making serious progress. It takes very little, after all, for the virus to get out of control once it starts spreading again. And nobody wants to return to those days when GDP was going through the floor and all they could do was just sit and watch.

The UK government has clearly got its work cut out for it. Now it must devote all its energies to rescuing the economy while also making sure that the coronavirus situation does not get any worse. So far, with a policy that failed so badly, the highest death rate in Europe and now this big GDP collapse, the Johnson government has not achieved much to write home about yet. How it deals with these multiple crises will surely define its legacy.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2020