The UK Government’s Covid-19 Strategy

Since it was first identified in December 2019 in Wuhan,China,Covid-19 has raged across the world and posed severe challenges to the international community.With the wide spread of the virus and rising infection rate,Covid-19 pandemic has become more than just a public health emergency of international concern,but also a bombshell lobbed into the sphere of politics and economy.In such a context,decisions are taken in a highly uncertain,complex,and rapidly changing environment,and the way government has been formulating and communicating its Covid-19 response reveals its deep-rooted political inertia.As one of the typical cases that got off on the wrong foot in response to Covid-19 at the beginning of the pandemic,the UK government has seen the impact of neoliberalism,the mainstream ideology of international monopoly capitalism,running through its policy-making process.Neoliberalism upholds the principles of a “small government” and a “big market",advocates the supremacy of material interests and financial capital,thus has been criticized by many experts and academics for leading to the decline of the public health system,increasing inequality and governments’ incompetence in handling the pandemic.Based on documentary analysis of minutes and meeting papers from UK science advisory bodies and policy-making bodies,as well as secondary sources on the measurement of policy-making procedure in the UK,this article is aimed to analyze the formulation.adoption and evaluation of the UK government’s Covid-19 policy in the early stage of the epidemic,and to explore the influence of neoliberalism on the government’s approach when it deals with science,economy and the public to make policies.