Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Wednesday (20 May) a “world-beating” programme to test and trace those suspected of having been in contact with people who have tested positive for COVID-19 would be in place by 1 June.

Britain is currently testing the app – based on Bluetooth – on the Isle of Wight off the southern coast of England where the government says more than half the residents had downloaded it.

James Brokenshire, the junior interior minister in charge of security, said there were technical issues with the app but that traditional measures would be used until it works.

“The track and trace system is going to be ready,” Brokenshire told Sky News.

“We obviously want to see that the app is put in place well and effectively, learning from the experience on the Isle of Wight and dealing with all of the feedback that we’re receiving on some of the technical issues, to ensure that the app is as strong as we can make it.”

When asked directly if the system could work without the app, he said: “Yes”.

Tracking and tracing those infected is seen as crucial to preventing a deadly second wave of the outbreak – and thus getting the economy working again after the lockdown.

But Britain’s system has been dogged by criticism: opposition lawmakers said an earlier promise of a nationwide roll-out of a National Health Service (NHS)-developed smartphone app had slipped from the middle of this month.

The NHS Confederation, a group which represents the health service’s organisations, said the United Kingdom is at risk of a second jump in cases without clarity on government strategy.

“The relaxation of restrictions based on scientific advice is the right approach but it must be accompanied by an effective test, track and trace strategy which enables us to monitor local spread of the disease,” the confederation said.

“To achieve this we must have national, local and cross-agency involvement. Without this, we do face the risk of a second wave of infections.”

When asked about a trial in Britain of anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine, the drug U.S. President Donald Trump says he takes, Brokenshire said that all drugs were tested carefully. When asked if he would take it, he said he felt there was no need to make such statements.

His comments come after Trump on Tuesday defended taking hydroxychloroquine to try to ward off the novel coronavirus despite medical warnings about its use.

“I’m taking hydroxychloroquine,” Trump, 73, said on 18 May. “All I can tell you is so far I seem to be OK.”

Brokenshire also said restrictions on arrivals in Britain from overseas would be introduced early next month. He declined give any further details.

Charles Dunst is an associate at LSE IDEAS, the London School of Economics’ foreign policy think tank.

No matter how you look at it, China’s treatment of Australia during the coronavirus crisis is a cautionary tale.

After incompetently letting the coronavirus loose on the world, Beijing slapped tariffs on Australian barley this week in an unmistakable show of muscle after Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said last month that he wanted an independent inquiry into the COVID-19 outbreak.

For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the move is obviously intended as a warning for other leaders considering standing up to Beijing. For European countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, which export billions of dollars worth of goods to China every year, it should serve as a wake-up call about what it means to be dependent on Chinese trade.

Beijing has said the tariffs are a response to what it considers “dumping” by Australian barley producers. But it comes just weeks after the Chinese ambassador to Australia threatened a Chinese boycott in response to Morrison’s comments: “Why should we drink Australian wine? Why eat Australian beef?”

The fact that China, itself a trade surplus country, is willing to use punitive trade actions as a first-resort response should indeed alarm Beijing’s European partners.

The editor-in-chief of the state-run Global Times newspaper then described Australia as “chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes” (an attack that is particularly aggressive in Asia), adding: “sometimes you have to find a stone to rub it off.”

When Canberra pressed forward with its calls for an inquiry, Beijing suspended imports from Australia’s top meat processing facilities and imposed the tariffs on barley — measures that could cost the country upward of $500 million annually.

European exporters dependent on China are similarly exposed to the CCP’s pressure. Given Beijing’s now-demonstrated willingness to retributively leverage trade relationships for political purposes, China’s European partners should seriously reconsider their own economic interdependence with the country and think about careful decoupling from the Asian giant’s economy.

Australia’s relationship with China soured in 2018 when the former banned the effectively Chinese state-owned company Huawei from its nascent 5G network. Despite American lobbying and cybersecurity fears, the European Union ruled out banning Huawei, leaving the decision to individual member countries.

German operators Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone and Telefonica are all Huawei clients. German Chancellor Angela Merkel favors a level playing field for all providers, although some within her party favor banning the company. But when Germany debated Huawei, China’s ambassador there threatened “consequences” if Germany excluded the telecoms giant from its market.

Germany’s hesitance to ban Huawei, likely due to fear of Chinese retribution, will surely be augmented by China’s aggressive approach to Australia. These fears are not misguided, given that Germany exports some $95 billion of goods, namely cars and vehicle parts, to China every year — and that a disturbing percentage of that could disappear at the snap of the CCP’s fingers.

Germany is not the only vulnerable European state. Italy exports around $16 billion of goods to China annually. Dutch exports to China are worth around $12 billion per year.

For these and Beijing’s other European trade partners, Chinese billions come at a moral cost: placation of the CCP, a repressive regime currently carrying out a cultural genocide of China’s Uighur Muslims.

Such placation was perhaps best evinced in late April when European Union officials bowed to CCP pressure and softened their criticism of China in a report on disinformation.

“China has continued to run a global disinformation campaign to deflect blame for the outbreak of the pandemic and improve its international image,” the initial report said. After China got wind and threatened the European Union, Brussels’ senior officials ordered revisions “to soften the language.”

European appeasement of the CCP is no accident; it is the result of European leaders’ economic calculations. Many European governments are now in too deep and simply do not want to deal with the financial headache of falling out of Beijing’s good graces. China, in response to any perceived slight, could impose damaging tariffs on German car parts, Italian cars or Dutch malt extract.

China’s harsh treatment of Australia — at a moment when the latter faces its worst economic conditions since the Great Depression — further serves Beijing’s aims by demonstrating its global power and heightening European concerns, thus preemptively shutting many European mouths from criticizing the CCP.

The fact that China, itself a trade surplus country, is willing to use punitive trade actions as a first-resort response should indeed alarm Beijing’s European partners. It should also prompt them to prepare punitive economic policies, such as tariffs on Chinese goods that recipient states can easily find elsewhere. This could have a substantial impact, given that annual Chinese exports to Germany are worth around $110 billion, for instance.

Such a response, however, requires European leaders to wake up from their dream of liberal internationalism, recognize the reality of Chinese authoritarianism and reevaluate their countries’ relationships with a great power whose illiberal ruling regime demands complicity. Trade with China is deeply intertwined with the CCP’s construction of an illiberal Sino-centric world order. Europe can no longer pretend otherwise.

Europe’s leaders would be wise to pursue careful decoupling or at least preemptively prepare retaliatory steps — lest they find themselves coerced into the Beijing’s illiberal global order or reduced to gum on the sole of the CCP’s shoe.

Welcome to Declassified, a weekly column looking at the lighter side of politics.

(Important note: I’m not a doctor but I have set my Zoom background to ‘operating theater’)

Somebody notify Ed Sheeran fans! Having no sense of taste has been added to the U.K.’s coronavirus symptoms list. The move came weeks after experts first raised concerns that many cases were being missed because a lack of taste wasn’t part of the British government’s definition of what patients may experience when suffering with COVID-19.

Now, anyone suffering a sudden loss of taste should self-isolate for seven days to reduce the risk of spreading the infection, according to England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jonathan Van-Tam. The same applies to anyone experiencing a sudden loss of smell or, to use its medical name, anosmia (and I always thought Anosmia was one of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s children). Mind you, not being able to smell could come in handy, as the U.K. is considering testing sewage for the presence of the coronavirus as part of its national epidemic-monitoring program.

Of course smell can play an important part in politics. According to a study published in the American Journal of Political Science, people are more attracted to those who share their political views. The researchers found that greater “disgust sensitivity … predicts more conservative positions, particularly around issues involving morality and sexual reproduction.”

Researchers at Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro, Italy, also found a link between a person’s sensitivity to certain smells and them being sympathetic to right-wing views.

So if you want to avoid rabid right-wingers, make sure you have a piece of blue cheese in your pocket at all times.

Smell has other political uses. Ex-French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Carla Bruni once spent more than $40,000 in a year on gifts for former U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle, including perfume from the swanky Bonpoint boutique and cologne by Frédéric Malle. That same year, Sarko also bought a Louis Vuitton bag embossed with “BO” which, as well as being Obama’s initials, is also, at least in British English, shorthand for unpleasant body odor!

And of course, with crushing inevitability, you can buy a Donald Trump fragrance, which is presumably 90 percent hydroxychloroquine and, in the words of one Amazon reviewer, “kind of smells like urine.”

CAPTION COMPETITION

“Hand it over, little girl or I’ll close down your school!”

Can you do better? Email pdallison@politico.eu or on Twitter @pdallisonesque

Last week we gave you this photo:

Thanks for all the entries. Here’s the best from our post bag (there’s no prize except for the gift of laughter, which I think we can all agree is far more valuable than cash or booze).

“Is a game of limbo out of the question?” by Aleksandra Chadaj

Paul Dallison is POLITICO‘s slot news editor.