When the historians come to scrutinise the early 21st century and the UK government's response to Covid-19, they will find fewer succinct summations of the muddle we've gone through than Boris Johnson's own pre-recorded statement. Watch it for yourself:
Where to begin? As we're getting more details when Johnson makes a statement in the Commons and has a Q & A with the public Monday evening, we now know for certain what all the papers have trailed days in advance. The loosening of the lockdown proceed with the right to unlimited outdoor exercise, the chance to play sports in public spaces with members of your household, and the freedom to jump in your car and visit those beauty spots without Derbyshire plod jumping out of the bushes. That's fine and sensible. However, what isn't are Johnson's plan to send some of us back to work. We know the government want to do away with furlough and are concerned, thanks to their low opinion of the hoi polloi, for the consequences the extended absence from work for millions of people will have on labour discipline. Forget the PowerPoint presentation, the meaning of R, and switching up the slogan from Stay at Home to Stay Alert, this was the centrepiece of this evening's announcement.
And it is concerning. Presently, coronavirus infections run at about 4,000 confirmed new cases a day. The real figure will be much higher. The people catching it are those in harm's way - the NHS and care workers, key infrastructure workers, supermarket workers and, in turn, their households and others they come into contact during the course of their work. The government, however, want to see a phased return to work with the same message that you should work from home if you can, and go into work if you must all the while avoiding public transport (cycling and walking is singled out as the favoured method, as if everyone lives a stone's throw from their workplace like we're living in the 19th century) and abiding by social distancing measures at work. The problem here is 'must'. Why must some people return to work if they're not classified as a key worker? Why should they risk their health to earn the boss a few bob when then can stay safe at home? Why indeed. Hospital use is declining, though how much of this is thanks to the blunt advice some, even acute cases, would be better off staying away, and so is the grim tally of daily deaths. And yet the virus is very much abroad. New Zealand we ain't. It doesn't take mastery of spatial epidemiology to suppose having more workplaces open is going to bump up the rate of contagion.
The biopolitical management of this crisis has, from the outset, been a matter of class politics. Already it's women and minority ethnicities bearing the brunt because they disproportionately happen to be overrepresented in the care sector. Expanding the return to work to manufacturing will see more low paid workers, again largely women, largely minority ethnicities and nationalities, put at risk. Meanwhile the managers and bosses screaming about the flatlining order book will carry on working from home, as will the majority of the Tory white collar base, small businesses, and its massed cohorts of the retired. They can cheer on, they can literally clap on the efforts of others while they remain safe from infection. A happy coincidence then that protections remain in place for those most likely to vote Conservative next time.
Since Johnson recovered from his own brush with the bug, he has talked about saving lives before all else. Indeed, his talk tonight is caveated with an emphasis on following the data. And to be fair to him, among the malcontents and psychopaths he has elevated to position his is a more moderate voice. Safety first is the impression he wants to convey. This is all very well, but what matters is deeds, not words. Allowing more places to open, giving some bosses the green light to force their workers back into work now will drive infections up, will cause more suffering, and will lead to more unnecessary deaths.
Sunday, 10 May 2020
Saturday, 9 May 2020
Keir Starmer and the Media
Labour politicians shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. If a right wing rag offers space in their paper, it would be a mistake not to write something. If a regular column in The Sun was okay for Ken Livingstone in the early 90s, until Labour and the left has a mass circulation media of its own I don't see any problem writing for audiences ordinarily cut off from left wing politics. However, and this is a big however, one should be wary of their motives. Does have a Labour politician publish something with them confer legitimacy and bring in new readers? Are they wanting a comment piece from Labour in the interests of debate, or to fill up a few column inches on a slow day? In Keir's particular case, obviously not. Here was are in one of the seminal events of this century with news gushing from every downpipe and Labour's leader is getting a splash about VE Day on its 75th anniversary. What's the Telegraph's game?
They know indulging Keir now presents zero threat to their party and their Prime Minister. The polls are barely shifting thanks to the crisis, and while Keir's personal ratings are very good Boris Johnson's are better. Magnanimity? Hardly. Keir would not have been afforded this courtesy had he taken more of a critical stance versus the government. Instead, what it says is polite opinion is intensely relaxed with the person of the Labour leader. The monstering may still come, especially if he doesn't dump the Corbyn-lite programme he was elected on, but to paraphrase what Margaret Thatcher said of Mikhail Gorbachev; this is someone with whom we can do business.
For Keir, his willingness to engage demonstrates to them his reasonable reasonableness. Part of his calculation is acceptance by the Tory press separates him off from the Corbyn years, and detoxifies the party by extension to that layer of voters who pay attention to such things. This is especially important as well considering his remain credentials and the role he played in Labour's Brexit fudge. There's logic to this, I suppose. It's harder to demonise someone if they're feted as a legitimate establishment figure. But here's the problem. A favourable front page from the Telegraph is something of a coup, and a feat the Labour leadership might fancy repeating. And so cultivating good coverage cannot happen without more parts of the party programme getting downplayed. Without muting criticisms or offering an alternative leadership. The game and the rules of it as interpreted by the Tory editorial offices are simply accepted without question, and Keir jumps through any and all hoops placed in front of him. Just as the power of the press is in terminal decline he affirms their pre-eminence and right to arbitrate on what is ruled in and what it ruled out. Effectively, he's consenting to the disciplining of the party by an external force that would rather see Labour crash and burn.
Does this concern Keir? I very much doubt it. Opposition during the coronavirus quarantine was never going to be an easy business. Instead of walking that tightrope, however, Keir is tenuously dangling from it and what we're getting is the worst of all worlds. Tailing the government and congratulating ministers on their fine work when it's nothing of the sort, and then only making criticisms long after NHS workers and Piers bloody Morgan have spent weeks banging on about them is something alright, but it's not opposition.
Perhaps I'm being too hard on Kier. He's been in the job for five weeks and, with time, the hares and rabbits of dogged criticism and political opposition will be pulled from the hat. Yet in politics as with life, new politicians and by extension, new leaders start as they mean to go on. The supine media strategy and row backs on policy are suggestive of triangulation mark two, a taking for granted of Labour's new base while chasing so-called swing voters. And while we cannot say what opportunities may present the party between now and the eventual general election four years hence, missing open goals now because of a rigid adherence to the media's rules doesn't fill one with a sense of confidence.
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Thursday, 7 May 2020
The Class Politics of Easing the Lockdown
After Boris Johnson's own brush with Coronavirus, last week he addressed the Downing Street assembled to say he was holding firm on the lockdown. Being more cautious now and not ending our relatively light touch quarantining measures early, notwithstanding the best efforts of over-zealous coppers and an army of curtain-twitchers, help contain the virus and will mean fewer problems when restrictions are eventually relaxed. Behold, a Tory Prime Minister speaking sense and doing the right thing. Chalk it up, mark it in the diary, put the bloody flags out. But within a week of calming the jitters, we see a certain talking back of the quarantine. Last weekend, The Sun scooped on Johnson naming 26th May as the day to start easing things. On Monday, Rishi Sunak acknowledged the desire of the Tories to hound people back to work by cutting furlough payments down from 80% to 60% of wages up to £2,500/month. Then we had the news the government were paring back on its stay home messaging, with hints some changes to the lockdown will be made after the Bank Holiday weekend.
Reckless idiocy from a Tory party that was negligent from the outset? Well, not quite. The Sun can pretend we're promised "happy monday", with its affectionate nod to the happening yoof of 30 years ago, but quarantine is barely shifting. People might be "allowed" to leave the house more than once a day, drive from A to B provided social distancing is practised and perhaps, just perhaps, be allowed to have picnics in peace without the fuzz going in mob-handed. Nevertheless, what concerns are the arguments being spoken into the Prime Minister's ear by those who have it. Namely the Telegraph and its stable of, well, the unstable. On Tuesday, the paper ran seven comment pieces calling for an end to quarantine. Our good friend Iain Duncan Smith said it was time to unlock the lockdown and trust to people's common sense. Simon Dolan, an accountancy millionaire worth a very precise £142m is crowdfunding a legal challenge to the government's measures. Ridiculous as well as stingy, the Telegraph were kind enough to provide the column inches for him to speak his brains. The stubbornly mediocre Ross Clark found an angle to have a go at the traditional Tory bête noire with his 'Our hysterical teachers' unions refuse to put pupils over Coronavirus.' Perhaps he'd take a different view if he had to be crammed into a stuffy classroom full of coughing and sneezing kids. And then Steve Baker, the self-styled shop steward of Brexit, is allowed to get into a lather about the "dystopian, tyrannical lockdown." Oh, and it was the Telegraph who broke that story about Prof Neal Ferguson breaking his own recommend quarantine rules for a tête-à-tête with his sometimes companion, a story the paper had sat on for weeks until it could be used at the moment most opportune - in this case trying to distract attention from the death toll setting its new, grim milestone.
What gives? Our gaggle of silly geese are articulating, what polls show time after time, the impatience of a distinct minority. Not just folk-in-general who find the curbs frustrating and want to go line dancing or something, but of businesses great and small. For sundry captains of industry, it's not just lost income in the main (though a significant factor for some), but an instinctive, barely articulated terror of workers earning their money away from the beady eyes of their cadres of managerial overseers or, in the case of those on furlough, not doing anything at all. They fear workers might return with senses of uppity entitlement, knowing how dependent their bosses are on them to keep the cogs of commerce going. And they fret workers could start demanding things like adequate social distancing, changed work patterns and more time off, and not be as willing to accept the petty authoritarianism of the office, the warehouse, the factory, the shopfloor. The worry is the longer the lock down carries on, the harder it will be to reinforce labour discipline in the future. Coronavirus has meant, in the main, the largely quiescent and atomised workforce who largely went home in March might return as, well, something different.
For the small business person the situation is more acute. The government are doling out loans and made available payments of £25k, but the suspension of normality points to uncertainty in the future. When restrictions are lifted so a semblance of the old is achieved, how long will it be before the hairdresser, the cafe owner, the HR consultant, the plumber, sees demand for their services climb back to their previous level? Who knows if they ever will again? With a sharp economic contraction and mass job losses, plus millions more feeling the furlough pinch and others realising they've managed without their daily indulgences, the longer the lockdown persists the more terrifying the future gets. What the Telegraph writers are advocating looks completely psychotic if you know the first thing about what not to do during an outbreak of infectious disease, but you can understand why some might find these points of view appealing.
The Telegraph then is responding to this sentiment and articulating it, reminding the government that for them and the interests they hold dear there are things more dangerous than Covid-19. As Russell Lynch, the economics editor put it in a particularly execrable piece, "the cost of saving lives in this lockdown is too high." Yes, even when it's the printing presses keeping everything afloat. What to do? Well, how about opposing this idiocy for starters? Nicola Sturgeon has - rightly - ruled out an early return to work and lifting of restrictions, and so has set her face against it. Which is entirely correct when you look at the numbers dying and the numbers of infected. And Labour? I'm sorry to say its response is proving pitiful. There are plenty of criticisms to be made of Keir Starmer's forensically forensic approach, but to - in practically his first act as leader - demand the government produce a plan for easing the lockdown at about the time deaths were peaking was incredibly stupid. No one was calling for it, but what Keir has done is add his voice to the lunatic right. He's helped encourage their preoccupations by mainstreaming their concerns, and for what? Even from the crude perspective of vote grubbing, there is support to be gained from sticking up for the lockdown and being seen to be concerned with saving lives. Poll after poll shows most are worried about an early lifting of the rules, so if we give credence to the argument that we lost in December because we didn't listen to the voters, perhaps now might be a good time? You do not equivocate with people's lives.
The government claims to be guided by the science, but you don't need SAGE briefings to see how deaths and infection rates are far too high to consider anything other than the most modest easing of the rules. New Zealand might be heading back to normality, but that's because they moved early and ruthlessly to stamp Covid-19 out. Germany are lifting restrictions, but again more preparedness was in evidence - but it looks too soon, now they're seeing an uptick in infections. And the United States are minded to swap quarantines and curfews for handwashing and face masks, but they're led by a babbling vacancy and are saddled with a notoriously sociopathic employer class. We're nowhere near the first two countries, and it would be a tragedy, a sick joke if Trump is held up as any sort of model. The leader of the opposition cannot be relied on either, so it's down to the left and the labour movement to make the case for a sensible politics with different priorities. Keep the lockdown. Make sure people are paid properly. Save lives.
Wednesday, 6 May 2020
Kraftwerk - The Model
Very sorry to hear about the passing of Florian Schneider. Let us remember him properly.
Tuesday, 5 May 2020
Why do the Tories Want to Cut Furlough Payments?
Speaking on ITV last night, Sunak said the government would not continue spending as much on the furloughing scheme "without changes" to it. "We've got to ease people back to work in a measured way", which is sort of difficult for as long as a potentially deadly virus stalks the land. But if we've learned anything about the Tories over the last 10 years, things like facts and premature deaths tend not to unduly bother the Tories. According to the Evening Standard, reducing payments is a "leading option" so people become gradually worse off by design. To what end? To encourage people to look for new jobs. Incredible.
Despite Boris Johnson ruling out renewed cuts, the fact this dog's dinner is a frontrunner is the Tories flashing their ideological teeth. Remember, for whole swathes of establishment opinion unemployment is not caused by, well, a lack of jobs. Rather it's a case of welfare entitlements being too generous. Without a shred of evidence, it is assumed social security pushes up the value of labour. I.e. the existence of a pitiful floor of £58/week for 18-24s and £73/week for the over 25s means the jobless are put off taking low paid work because life is peachy drawing them benefits. The fact the number of unemployed, even in the supposed good times, always outnumber available vacancies shows this up for the utter bollocks it is. But you can see the logic of this assumption playing out in the coming attack on the furlough scheme. Workers sat at home doing nothing, drawing 80% of their salary without having to work, living off unearned money is fine and dandy for the owners of capital but definitely isn't for those of proletarian stock. It has an effect of distorting the labour market, of preventing the normal churn of job change and leaving those vacancies in the fields unfilled. It's as if Sunak is trying to drive down living standards of furloughed workers to force a rapid restructure of the labour market.
The furloughing scheme was set up with two purposes in mind. To prevent the transmission of Covid-19, obviously, and preserve capitalist relations of production. In other words preserve the power relationships and structures of authority the so-called free economy depends on. This is why Sunak followed the French furlough scheme as opposed to an emergency basic income (itself not without difficulties): the state is stumping up the readies, but is doled out through employers thereby preserving the wage relation: the relationship absolutely central to capitalism and its class system.
But what about the debt the state is chalking up? We can't afford the scheme indefinitely, can we? Actually, we can. To all intents and purposes the government have stopped borrowing on the markets and is now being funded directly by the Bank of England courtesy of printed money. Because the government owns the Bank, it can determine the length of debt repayment, the rate, and whether it should be "repaid" at all. Why this won't result in PPE-equipped members of the public heading to the supermarket with wheelbarrows of cash is because the global economy is deflating. Thanks to stagnant wages, the legacies of austerity, and the massive hit to ordinary people's spending power there is a lack of money circulating around the real economy. Therefore their reluctance to carry on as they are isn't about fearing inflation. The problem the Tories have is their "tough choices", which were in fact easy choices considering it wasn't Tory voters old and new who tended to shoulder the burden, are shown up by their actions now to have been completely unnecessary. The worry is the public might notice and not swallow their nonsense about paying down the debt, or won't accept their excuses about why the NHS can't be funded properly, or homeless people taken off the streets. In other words, their measures are a far cry from neutral, managerial responses to an unprecedented crisis: they are playing (class) politics.
The Tory preparedness to terrify and immiserate people, wrapped up in cod philosophies and supposed economic orthodoxies condense the class instincts of their party. Ultimately, the reason why the Tories win and win again is because when they have the upper hand they happily use the full power of the state and their media to not just attack the opposition, but disorganise the grounds for it. While workers are atomised at home scaring them with more hardship is likely to dampen opposition to a hastily-organised and fudged return to work. After all, the country can afford only so much support. This then is why they want to cut furlough payments down further. Not because of any public spending crisis, but because it makes their strategy for lifting the lockdown sooner smoother as well as "encouraging" a desire for a return to work. It's political manipulation, and it will cost lives.
Chuka Umunna's Jobs
Take our old friend Chuka Umunna, for example. Since leaving parliament, he's ... done quite well for himself. According to reports, Chuka doesn't have one job. He has four. Readers will remember he found time in his busy schedule to chair a couple of meetings a month for the centrist think tank, Progressive UK. A nice non-job if you can get it. Added to his portfolio of work is Director of Digital Identity Net UK, a company that provides a one-stop shop signing in service to multiple internet outlets. Because, you know, signing in to Twitter and Facebook without clicking the remember me box is such a chore. According to the corporate blurb, "The Company is led by a team of highly accomplished individuals who have built businesses in Digital Identity, Payments, Banking, Technology and Government." Why is Chuka involved then? He's also got a gig as a Forbe's columnist writing on "leadership", and vaguely serves as a "strategic advisor" to sundry outfits on "business critical issues."
Readers might recall Chuka was a junior lawyer for the best part of the 00s (this sretch of his life is now rebranded as a "a corporate employment law solicitor in the City and central London") before latching on to the soft left platform Compass as his means of bagging a safe Labour seat. Inexplicably a recipient of much hype off the back of a couple of so-so Question Time appearances, he was recognised and elevated under Ed Miliband just as he traded the politics of Compass in for the Blairist continuity of Progress. Following a failed leadership bid in 2015 and perennial cultivator of a new centrist party, you'll remember the happy day he and his scabrous cohort left Labour. Then followed the wry amusement when their desperate project was dashed by political realities and he traded up to the Liberal Democrats - with a very brief moment of leading "The Alternative", or half of the CUK MPs who fell out with the other half.
Chuka's passage into corporate shindiggery reminds one of George Osborne move from MP for Tatton to a one-man workforce, including his assumption of the editorship of the Evening Standard without any journalistic experience. His case is instructive because it offers a template for Chuka's trajectory. Osborne was not so much purchased for his talents as for his contact book. During his six years as chancellor and 11 years as Dave's right hand man, Osborne got to know who the key players in Conservative politics are - especially the shadowy business networks whose political inputs are kept out of the limelight. He learned how the state works, and filled his contact list with oligarchs and billionaires. Given how unseemly close the Tories under Dave grew to China, he knows quite a few of the top bureaucrats in Beijing too. Chuka is small fry compared to this. Life as a Opposition spokesperson, backbencher, leader of a micro party, and celebrity recruit to the LibDems hardly confers as much social capital. But it allows for the accumulation of enough to make a decent grift possible. When Forbes, Digital Identity Net, or whatever company buys Chuka in they're buying his legend, his ability to provide access to some elite decision makers and business interests - especially those in the so-called remain movement. They buy his knowledge of how the system works, and perhaps that little bit of media magic Chuka was able to command for a short while. They're investing their economic capital in his social and cultural capital, and he in return is recuperating the time spent in cultivating these networks in ways conducive to a healthy bank balance.
From the point of view of the mainstream, politics is not a struggle but the judicious building of strategically useful relationships. Chuka's rapid rise to the front rank of British politics and his slow sink into irrelevance, while maintaining his profile commends him to companies who think they'll profit from having a celebrated hire. And, sadly, it says everything about the rotten nature of politics and the decrepitude of British business that no marks are awarded this way and it is seen to work. That means we won't be hearing the last of Chuka and his ever-increasing pile of jobs.
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Monday, 4 May 2020
The Sociology of the Vine/Gove Bookcase
I agree with these comrades. There's nothing wrong having dodgeoir books. I've also got Atlas Shrugged, a few books by Tories (some of whom were, shock horror, entertaining), and Mein Kampf, a book not so much demonstrative of evil's banality but the tedium of it. A good book mix suggests a critical, inquiring mind and what you see on the Vine/Gove shelf is symptomatic of a closed universe. For all the defences trotted out by the hacks, these are shelves full of tat confirming their owners' prejudices. Tony Blair's A Journey is as left wing as it gets: there's practically nothing on socialist politics, let alone social history. Nothing about the masses, a great deal about the classes. Bits and pieces about the Second World War, plenty of books about the establishment politics of the United States, a smattering of undemanding novels and a book on gin.
Even worse is the over-preponderance of biographies. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing up with political biographies per se. All are self-serving and axe-grinding to a degree, but they're good for bringing out the minutiae of the social lives and social circles of our social superiors. They clarify the thought processes and pressures on a politician's decision-making, providing an inside track to controversies not available as they unfolded. But when they're substitutes for other works on politics? Houston, we have a problem. It's not just that the lives of interest to the Vine/Gove house are nearly all elite and span a spectrum from the centre to the right (the sole proper leftwinger to grace the shelves, Sir Stafford Cripps, was quintessentially posh), it betrays a particular understanding of politics too. For the pair of them as consummate social climbers, their passage into the media and then the elite was eased by sucking up to the right people at the right moment, accumulating favours and political capital to ease the path of their advancement. From their point of view, the social world isn't a struggle: it's about making judicious strategic choices. Politics then is just another social activity, albeit the back and forth of elite players buttressed by institutional power and economic interests whose presence are just accepted to the point of not being thought about. It's all part of the feel for the game. Tomes of political science, theory, and sociology are therefore irrelevant. If advancement is the goal you need to understand how to play politics, not understand how it came to be. The overrepresentation of the biography on this bookshelf is more than hero worship. Rather they are etiquette manuals. Strategy guides. How to overcome the difficulties politics throws up, how to balance competing factions, ride popular waves, put down rebellions, when to ignore and when to acknowledge discontent. These are books for people who care about and want to profit from the dynamics of the small p politics of big P Politics.
When she tweeted a picture of her bookcase, Sarah Vine knew three of the books featured would press all the right social media buttons and provide a bit of distraction from her government's mishandling of the crisis. Who on the right doesn't enjoy trolling the left? However, what she inadvertently let slip was the state of mind and the inspiration of a coming power couple. She knows their game, and she's happy to be brazen about it.
Sunday, 3 May 2020
New Left Media May 2020
1. Don't Leave, Organise (Twitter)
2. Everyday Analysis (Twitter)
3. Labour Buzz (Twitter)
4. MeTooUCU (Twitter)
5. Rob Jones (Twitter)
6. SWP Tyneside Crisis 2020 (Twitter)
If you know of any new(ish) blogs, podcasts, channels, Facebook pages or whatever that haven't featured before then drop me a line via the comments, email, Facebook, or Twitter. Please note I'm looking for blogs etc. that have started within the last 12 months or thereabouts. The new media round up appears hereabouts when there are enough new entrants to justify a post!
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Reckless or Psychopathic?
At the risk of evoking nostalgic feels, how about last summer? You might recall a bit of polling that revealed the Tory party membership were prepared to blow up the economy, the Act of Union, and the Conservative Party itself if it meant Brexit got done. Guess it meant a lot to them. Nevertheless, someone who read the room correctly was one Boris Johnson. He was always going to win the leadership contest off the back of his legend, and going hard on Brexit ensured he cleaned up. There was absolutely no ground for his hapless opponents to occupy. Come the Autumn we had crisis, shuttle diplomacy, and that horrendous general election. At every step, the short term interest of Johnson's career were put before the party he leads and the country he affects to love. That he wasn't stopped was less a measure of his luck or the alleged genius of Dominic Cummings, and more the perennial Tory friend: division among the party's opponents. Johnson's battle scars and recklessness made him Brexit's biggest booster (and best defender). We know what happened next.
What's this got to do with now? The bullishness, short-termism, and devil may care attitude is what. From Johnson's tasteless gags (Operation Last Gasp), condemning thousands to needless deaths out of sheer complacency, their initial herd immunity "strategy", and lying about the number of tests and massaging the PPE statistics, the pandemic has seen the government pass from feet dragging to arse covering without an interlude of competency. And now they are talking about easing quarantine measures, you can be forgiven for feeling a frisson of concern.
According to Saturday's Sun, Johnson has set 26th May as the target for relaxing controls. There will be new track and trace measures in place following their success in keeping the rate of infection low in South Korea, but conceding public anxieties and fears of a return to work. "We will need to do a massive confidence-building job as everyone is still terrified. We have to persuade people it’s safe to go back", said one anonymous (as ever) cabinet source. Yeah, but it's not safe is it? The Sun goes on to quote Matt Hancock in saying schools will only be reopened once it's okay to do so, and workplaces will absolutely be super safe as distancing measures, etc. are put into place. But if deaths and infections are still too high, the government are committed to following the science. Of course they are.
Repeat until you're blue in the face: the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour. This last week we've had an unseemly scramble by the government to meet its own target of 100,000 Coronavirus tests a day. In the most shameless fudging of the figures, the Tories proclaimed victory, but when you drill down into the actual figures these are tests provided. I.e. Some 40k have been mailed out have been lumped in too. And so, without regard to the facts the Tories have bulldozed on and trumpeted a success that isn't really there.
The fear is we're going to see exactly the same when it comes to easing the lockdown. Johnson has named the date and so the pressure is on. Will the government "forget" deaths outside of hospital, like it did earlier in the crisis? Is Johnson going to point at graphs showing dips in infection rates and claim these are acceptable to the pointy heads, and therefore good enough for him? Are pictures of office desks surrounded by fibre glass going to fill the papers so to cultivate a pressure among the old on the young to return to work? And what then is acceptable as a second bump in infections? As we've seen virtually everywhere with the easing of restrictions, transmission has gone up again. Is there going to be a ceiling at which point the shutters come down? And as it's businesses pushing for a semblance of normality, is the government inclined to cleave to them over keeping them in stasis when it's virtually cost-free but, danger of dangers, keeps the work force idle?
My worry is the government will barrel toward its target and not take warning signs about resurgent infection seriously, despite protestations to the contrary. At every juncture during Boris Johnson's premiership inconvenient evidence has been cast aside as if misplaced optimism can see us through. And there is nothing, nothing the government have said or done suggesting they're about to operate any differently. Are they psychopathic or reckless? Whatever the case, it won't be them paying the highest price.
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Friday, 1 May 2020
Five Most Popular Posts In April
1. Keir Starmer's Falkirk Moment
2. The Left and Keir Starmer
3. Our Compliant Media
4. Understanding the New Shadow Cabinet
5. On Tim Roache's Resignation
More critical Keir studies than Coronavirus studies, then! But as I said last night, life goes on, the world still turns. And so the exposure of Labour Party scabs at HQ piqued the majority of the interest. But close on its heels are the arguments I made for staying in the party, despite the election of a new leadership. We do make a foray into the coverage of Covid-19 via an analysis of the pathetic levels of scrutiny provided by the media - and you thought they were bad during the general election campaign. Then we swing back to Keir Starmer with a look at the politics of his shadow cabinet choices. And sneaking in at the end is the wee piece looking at Tim Roache's resignation as GMB General Secretary. A grim story to be sure that will come out in due course.
I have a couple of selections for the second chance saloon this month. First is my piece on renewed austerity. At the Downing Street press conference yesterday, Boris Johnson ruled out a second round of cuts. Obviously, only a fool would trust a compulsive liar but even if he is not minded to go down that route, the people around him are and the clamour for cuts will assail Number 10 daily from the editorial offices, the oligarchs, and the appalling creatures who infest the Tory party. Here then are the argument against. And the second is something a little out of the ordinary. Twin Peaks: The Return was a TV highlight of the last decade and is compulsory viewing. I also wrote about it, so there you are.
What does the next month bring? More government arse-covering, more forensically forensic oppositional opposition, more Trump idiocy, North Korean intrigue, and a heap of appalling tragedy. And, assuming Coronavirus is kept at bay, yours truly will be covering it all.
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