Boris Johnson has a new American hero

BORIS Johnson wants Britons to lift their eyes to the horizon, forget Covid for a while and dream again. No longer cast as a Churchill at war, the British prime minister seems more inclined now to conjure up the healing figure of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR), the US president whose New Deal sought to pull America out of the Great Depression.

In an interview on Monday, Mr Johnson spoke of a new "Rooseveltian approach to the UK". The FDR reference was not an accident. Michael Gove, a senior Cabinet minister, devoted much of a weekend speech to the example of FDR, who "managed to save capitalism, restore faith in democracy, indeed extend its dominion, renovate the reputation of government, set his country on a course of increasing prosperity and equality of opportunity for decades".

Mr Johnson will lay out more of his own new deal, including £5 billion (S$8.6 billion) of infrastructure spending, in a speech on Tuesday. He has already lifted the curtain a little this week, unveiling a £1 billion school-building project and another £560 million in school renovations. This is meant to signal a break from Mr Johnson's pretty disastrous management of the Covid-19 pandemic. It puts him on more familiar territory - painting in broad, optimistic brushstrokes rather than explaining cumbersome quarantine rules. He also wants to reassure working-class voters that he remains committed to his promise to rebalance Britain's economy.

It is easy to see what attracts Mr Johnson to FDR. Mr Roosevelt was deeply attuned to the public mood, something that Mr Johnson values hugely. He projected an irrepressible cheerfulness, whatever his private worries. His theme song, Happy Days are Here Again, was a refreshing change from the Herbert Hoover Depression anthem, Brother Can you Spare a Dime?

Like Mr Johnson, FDR had a knack for co-opting good ideas. Many of his New Deal programmes were adaptations of policies started by Mr Hoover. FDR leaned heavily on key advisers such as Jesse Jones, the Texan Democrat who ran the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Commerce Department and so much else that Mr Roosevelt referred to him as "Jesus Jones". Mr Johnson's adviser Dominic Cummings has similar power, though not the official titles.

FDR also offers a cautionary tale. His policies were often confusing and counterproductive. A fiscal conservative rather than a Keynesian deficit spender, he hiked income taxes, corporate taxes, taxes on "excess profits" and inheritance taxes - all of which slowed a recovery that took a decade. Historians disagree about his impact on the Depression. It was monetary expansion and meeting wartime orders that seemed to help most.

RESTORING PUBLIC FAITH

And yet, FDR restored public faith in government. He is considered one of the greatest US presidents because in establishing a welfare safety net, he gave Americans their dignity back, if not much of a living standard until later. As FDR's biographer Robert Dallek wrote, he "humanised the American industrial system".

Unfortunately for Mr Johnson, restoring faith takes more than a couple of speeches and some good intentions. If Mr Johnson's economic reforms are not done right, they will further erode trust in government and land Britain in a deeper hole. His government has performed abjectly on the Covid battlefield and confused just about everyone with the lifting of lockdown restrictions. It is still working to increase testing and to build a viable contact-tracing system.

There will be questions about how to pay for the new spending spree. Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak will need to borrow a lot more, and he will probably have to find a way to raise additional revenue without discouraging investment. But those are second-order questions. Britain's Covid response failed not because the country could not spend enough, but because of flawed decision-making and an inability to implement new policies well.

Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings argue that reform of the civil service will address both those failings. The goal may be worthy, but trying to overhaul the state bureaucracy while working to contain the pandemic, exit the European Union and rebalance the economy is risky. It also ignores the clear failings in Downing Street.

In some ways, Mr Johnson's challenge is the inverse of FDR's. Britain has a fairly strong welfare system, albeit with some big holes such as social care. But the country needs to rebuild and revive some of the foundations of its industrial and post-industrial strength - including education and infrastructure - and to empower local government.

The coronavirus has strengthened the argument for reducing Westminster's dominance. Britain is the most centralised government in the G-7, when looking at revenue raised by local government. This increases inefficiency and makes it difficult for services to meet local needs. It also makes the state less accountable and more resistant to change.

Mr Johnson may have FDR's popular touch and appetite for bold action, and he is right that Britain will need a more activist government for a while. But this new deal will be a bad deal if it tackles the wrong problems. BLOOMBERG