A policy framework of convenience: on Covid-19 and the strategic use of resilience in the UK

Over the last decade or so, resilience has allegedly become one of the leading policy paradigms. However, it is astonishing how little reference the UK government made to resilience thinking in its policy response to Covid-19. While resilience discourse has figured prominently in many policy areas in the UK, there is a complete absence of the resilience discourse in the official policy programme during the pandemic. This article shows how UK government policy shifted from a biopolitical resilience approach centred on herd immunity during the early stages of the pandemic to a classic liberal policy framework once the scale of the problem became apparent. It is only once the vaccination programme—a traditional, state-led public health intervention—was successful that personal responsibility and herd immunity resurfaced on the government agenda. This policy shift away from—and then back to—biopolitics betrays a strategic use of resilience. Resilience only really seems to develop policy traction in low-risk situations of little public relevance. When key national issues are at stake, resilience is easily abandoned in favour of traditional public policy approaches. Once these have been successful, resilience discourse re-emerges as a low-cost, biopolitical mode of governing.