UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has embraced mission-oriented governance in letter but not in spirit. Far from empowering the state to serve the public interest, his plan for a COVID-19 testing "moonshot" threatens to weaken further the capacity of the public-health sector.
LONDON – An old Zen Buddhist saying cautions, “Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.” By focusing too much on the means, one can lose sight of the ends. A case in point is UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ambitious £100 billion ($130 billion) “Operation Moonshot” to boost the country’s COVID-19 testing capacity from 350,000 per day to ten million per day by next spring. Owing to its design, Johnson’s plan is at best a distraction from his government’s ongoing failure to implement an effective test-and-trace system; at worst, it represents a conscious effort to undermine the public sector.
LONDON – An old Zen Buddhist saying cautions, “Do not mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.” By focusing too much on the means, one can lose sight of the ends. A case in point is UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s ambitious £100 billion ($130 billion) “Operation Moonshot” to boost the country’s COVID-19 testing capacity from 350,000 per day to ten million per day by next spring. Owing to its design, Johnson’s plan is at best a distraction from his government’s ongoing failure to implement an effective test-and-trace system; at worst, it represents a conscious effort to undermine the public sector.