A few days before it was announced there would be a nationwide UK lockdown from late March, Sky News political editor Beth Rigby remarked on an unexpected shift in the Prime Minister’s behaviour. Struck by the importance Boris Johnson was attaching to scientific advice, Rigby mused that a populist politician seemed to be taking a non-populist approach to the crisis.
The embrace of science has persisted throughout the pandemic. As well as justifying government decisions in the language of scientific advice, the country’s chief medical officers and scientific advisers – from Chris Whitty and Jenny Harries to the ill-fated epidemiologist Neil Ferguson – have been leading actors in the British coronavirus drama.
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