Polling in the U.K. is showing a spike in popularity for prime minister Boris Johnson. Data from YouGov also show that, during the coronavirus crisis, the government is enjoying its first net-positive approval rating in ten years.

However, writing for The Irish Times, Denis Staunton argues that “by characterizing the fight against coronavirus as a national effort to protect the NHS, Johnson has tapped into a deep vein of British national identity,” and thus avoided the criticism that ought to have undermined his government. Staunton says:

Never mind that many of those who have died of the virus might not even have become infected if the lockdown had come earlier or if testing and contact tracing had limited local outbreaks. If nobody who died did so because the NHS lacked the capacity to treat them, the strategy would be a success regardless of how Britain’s death toll compared to its neighbours’.