CoVID-19 – Week 11

Its official, this is the driest UK spring on record but its not that inconsistent with the weather over the last few years. We might gripe but we acknowledge that May-June now gives us the best weather while July-August is very much a lottery and you definitely need your umbrella and raincoat handy. The problem we have is that our institutions are set in ways that are not easily adapted. Its often been said that we ought to split up the summer school holidays and that it doesn’t make a great deal of sense to have children off for such a long period. Ask a SEN (special educational needs) teacher and they’ll tell you their pupils can spend the best part of their autumn term getting back to where they were in mid July.

The rot is now showing and the elite are running out of Domestos

This means family holidays get corralled into the peak season when the rates go up. At the same time we now get wet, changeable weather. Its typical of the British mindset, doing it the way we’ve always done it with structures built with that in mind. The irony is evident when you compare life in Britain today with 50 years ago and its best illustrated with the comedic, but somewhat true, observation that when a foreigner doesn’t understand what you’re saying, you just say it louder. A history of ruling 2/3 of the world has that effect. It also goes some way to explaining why a party that serves 5% of the population maintains 40%+ popularity.

The traditional working class tend to be patriotic, royalist and proud of the Britain that was an empire. The flag tends to be a unifying factor even though nationalism itself is divisive. Only in the last 60 years has the British working class seen a slice of the cake whereas the ruling class have kept it to themselves since 1066. The British mindset has kept us from revolution since Cromwell while WWII gave working people space to dream of a better life. Post war was a golden era for the British people but lasted all but 3 decades when the elite regrouped and took all the gains back over the 4 decades following. In terms of prospects we are behind where we were in 1945 but the CoVID-19 crisis has given us another space.

Unfortunately this Conservative government (the clue is in the name) is trying to pull us back to some semblance of normal — a normal that simply doesn’t exist in reality but sounds like it does when an Etonian Churchill wannabe spouts off. It makes me wonder if the chaos surrounding this government is partially planned (though they wouldn’t know a plan if it smacked them in the face). If there had been order in coming out of this sham lockdown it might have heightened the sense of community but it looks like our society is going to be as fractured as ever when we eventually come out of it. Such a society will always gravitate towards a conservative government.

This engenders the sense that we’re stuck in second gear and it seems like no matter what hits us, the bastion that is the British establishment will stand firm while the rest of us run round like headless chickens. It feels like the polling, showing that a great number of us don’t want to go back to normal, will evaporate as we focus on surviving the post crisis era. But all this time the ground has been shifting and capitalism is looking threadbare. The rot is now showing and the elite are running out of Domestos.

It comes down to perspective. However much Brexiteers want to flaunt their 52%, if just 3% had gone the other way it would have been an entirely different ball game. If the vote had been 3 years later it probably would have gone the other way too. Rarely do parties form governments on the popular vote so while our system lends a kind of stability it doesn’t cater to popular demand unless that demand is overwhelming. However you don’t need the majority on your side to get your way, you simply need a critical mass. Its a lever effect if you can imagine a small fraction of the population having enough influence to tip the balance.

While the machines of collective action, such as unions, have been critically weakened considerably over the last 4 decades so have the instruments of national recovery. A decade of austerity might have been designed to turn the UK into a bargain basement for predators such as the US health industry but it has also destroyed our resilience, leaving the government few options. Yet more notably, the decisions, actions and overall strategies of this inept government, though they may not have united the country, they haven’t created fissures along discernable socio-economic lines either.

Their policy on relocating elderly patients to care homes regardless of their CoVID-19 status has disproportionately hit their core base. They have had to backtrack on the NHS dividend that immigrants are required to pay and by recognising the crucial role of immigrants in vital services they must now tread more carefully in regard to immigration policy. Its no longer something that can be passed covertly, any attempt to do so will be placed under the spotlight. The divisive power of Brexit has also been neutralised to some degree and could, in fact, become increasingly toxic for the current administration as it becomes another front it has to defend.

While austerity has reduced resilience in the national economy and hit communities really hard it has forced those communities to consider the inherent resources within its members and local economy while many of those who managed to stay outside of the universal credit system have now been forced to depend on it and are discovering how punitive and degrading it can be.

Its up to those with vision and determination to map a path out of this crisis that doesn’t lead back to where we came from. The majority of people know there has to be another way while the government will be determined to pull us back into the normal that suits them. We simply need to be mindful that the instruments required to build a better future aren’t the ones that got us here in the first place.