George Osbourne’s austerity programme was aimed not only at balancing the books but in shrinking the state. His toxic legacy has left a hollowed out civil service unable to cope with unexpected events. Boris Johnson has made a bad situation worse by centralising decision making in his group of “weirdos”. Inability to act decisively has become apparent. Compare UK slowness to repatriate people first from China then Japan. Now we see paralysis to deal with the effect of the collapse of Flybe on regional connectivity, not just from Exeter, but across small regional airports in UK. Nils Prately puts it succinctly:

Nils Pratley, Financial editor, The Guardian Business View 6 march 2020

No soft landing

The easy part for the government was refusing Flybe’s request for a £100M loan. The Connect consortium that owned Flybe – Virgin Atlantic, Stobart Air and the US hedge fund Cyrus Capital – had only woolly investment intentions. It was puzzling how the terms of any loan could qualify as “commercial” if no commercial lender was willing to step in. The spread of the coronavirus might quickly have made £100m an inadequate sticking-plaster, as argued here yesterday. Ministers had little choice.

But there is still a big job to be done – minimising the fallout from Flybe’s failure. On that score, the new aviation minister, Kelly Tolhurst, came to the Commons bearing only good intentions. The government “stands ready” to help regional airport and regional connectivity, she said.

Come on, the government has had seven weeks to prepare for Flybe’s demise. Many routes will be picked up by other airlines, but not all. By now one would expect ministers to have decided which of the marginal routes will be protected via public service obligation subsidies, as already applied to Flybe’s London-Newquay operation.

Details, it seems, will follow in the “regional air connectivity review” commissioned in January. The government needs to step up the pace. There is an obvious danger of a domino effect in which regional airports are thrown into financial crisis after the disappearance of their largest customer. The way to address that is not by “standing ready”. It’s by making some decisions, sharpish.