Everything is connected. This is both the great joy of the world and its great terror. And it seems right now that two of the things that are intimately and alarmingly connected are Brexit and Ireland’s sleepy response to the threat of the Indian coronavirus variant.
If anything is going to reverse the progress we have made in fighting the pandemic, it is the spread of variants that have had such a devastating impact on India. If you look at graphs of the proportion of the dominant Indian variant (called B.1.617.2) found in tests taken in European countries, the picture is starkly clear. By far the largest incidence is in the UK. And out on its own in second place is Ireland.
The numbers are still very small. But on Friday, England's chief medical officer Prof Chris Whitty said that the Indian variant would almost certainly overtake the Kent variant as the dominant one in the UK.
The epidemiology of all of this is for experts to analyse. But the politics behind it are very worrying
We can be pretty sure that what happens in the UK will happen here. The Kent variant spread very rapidly to Ireland at the beginning of this year and is now responsible for a large majority of cases here. The same will probably now happen with the Indian strain. This is bad news because that strain seems to be 50 per cent more transmissible.
The epidemiology of all of this is for experts to analyse. But the politics behind it are very worrying. It looks very much like Ireland's response to this threat has not just been very slow but that it has been shaped by the worst instincts of Boris Johnson.
The Indian variant began to show up in Ireland in the middle of April. Yet – and this is what demands explanation – Ireland did not add India to the list of countries from which travellers would have to undergo mandatory quarantine until April 27th.
Strange delay
To grasp how strange this delay has been, we need to go back more than a fortnight earlier, to April 9th, when Ireland added two of the three countries on the Indian subcontinent to the mandatory quarantine list.
Those two countries were Bangladesh and Pakistan. Conspicuous by its absence was India itself. So: we're very worried about what's happening on the Indian subcontinent. But we're not very worried about what's happening in the biggest and most populous part of it, where people are struggling even to get enough wood for the funeral pyres. Leaving India off Ireland's quarantine list doesn't make sense – unless you consider Brexit.
Brexit comes into it because Ireland has been broadly following the UK’s policies on restrictions for incoming travellers. This is not in itself remarkable – the Common Travel Area and the open Border on this island mean that Ireland has to be at the very least highly aware of what Johnson’s government is doing.
So far as I can see, though, what has tended to happen is that Ireland follows the UK – but a week later. So the UK put Bangladesh and Pakistan on its “red list” on April 2nd. We made the equivalent move on April 9th.
But in this case, the decision has a kind of secret watermark. It’s a crazy choice to make because it was also a silent resolve not to include India. Just as you can tell that a student has copied someone else’s work because he or she unthinkingly reproduces a distinctive error, it is obvious that what was going on here was a copy-and-paste job.
Ireland imposed quarantine on travellers from India a week after the UK did – just because that's what we do
What was being copied, though, was the worst kind of Brexit manoeuvring. During those weeks in April, Johnson was planning to fly to India to meet the prime minister, Narendra Modi.
The idea was that Johnson and Modi would announce the start of talks on a possible trade deal. Johnson would have a piece of paper to wave: you see, I told you Brexit is working. “Global Britain” is open for business.
Following London
This meeting was due to take place on April 25th. Johnson, it seems clear, deliberately delayed adding India to the UK’s red list so as to avoid offending Modi before he got his grand announcement.
This link was made plain on April 19th. On that day, Johnson’s trip to Delhi was cancelled because of the crisis there. And the UK immediately added India to its red list. Only when there was nothing to be gained for the Brexit cause did public health take priority.
But the Irish Government all this time simply did its usual thing. It followed London – even though London’s decisions were being made for reasons that were rooted in cynical politics and not in science.
Not only that, but it followed at the usual snail’s pace. Ireland imposed quarantine on travellers from India a week after the UK did – just because that’s what we do. We seem to have dawdled along after a British process that was itself dreadful.
Maybe we will be fortunate and the Indian variant won’t substantially undermine the effectiveness of vaccinations or the reopening of Irish society. But this whole episode suggests that we are relying on two things nobody should ever bet on. One is pure luck. The other is the decision-making of Boris Johnson.