Why the cure for coronavirus is worse than the disease.
A Government scandal is unfolding in real-time, but we are not powerless to stop the madness. It’s time to end the lockdown, with or without Boris Johnson’s say so.
The lucky-to-be-alive, dad-again, Prime Minister has promised to set out the government’s plans to “get our economy moving” next week, but with no vaccine, there is no light at the end of the tunnel for the majority of businesses. And seemingly no lifeline for the majority of people.
As if an extra 18,000 cancer deaths — due to a downturn in referrals and chemotherapy — and an increase in domestic violence, suicides and suicide attempts is not bad enough. The entire fabric of working life in this country has been torn apart — not as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, as the spin doctors would have us believe. But as a result of Government’s crass display of arrogance and ignorance.
Little wonder that the government is facing a challenge to the legality of the coronavirus lockdown. Wealthy businessman Simon Dolan, whose Jota Aviation company has been delivering personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS, has put the health secretary Matt Hancock on notice that he intends to issue proceedings for a judicial review unless the government reverses some of the lockdown measures and reinstates freedom of movement.
He is taking the action, which echoes that taken by Gina Miller over Brexit, on the grounds that the lockdown was both legally defective and disproportionate in law. He is also seeking minutes of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) meetings this year, some of which involved Boris Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings.
Dolan’s lawyer said the challenge rested on three main points: first, that the lockdown is “ultra vires” — outside of legal authority — because it implemented regulations under the Public Health Act 1984 instead of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 or the emergency Coronavirus Act 2020; second, that the government reimposed the lockdown on a “disproportionate” basis in law, using an “over-rigid” test regarding its effect on containing the disease but not its impact on the economy, jobs and wider health; and third, that it breached the European convention on human rights covering the right to liberty, family life, education and property.
I welcome this legal challenge. And I am not alone. Many people are getting restless. We don’t believe the YouGov and Ipsos polls that tell us most “Brits” support the lockdown. We don’t fall for the “stay home, stay safe, save lives” rhetoric. It’s propaganda; mind control. A contrived, empty gesture.
To quote Nesrine Malik in The Guardian, it has “the air of a friend who had habitually ignored you, then one day unexpectedly needed you, and so returned with empty gestures of affection.”
There is a phrase in Arabic that translates as: “They killed him, then walked at his funeral.” The current government has perfected this game, squeezing the NHS’s budget, slashing welfare, hacking at the public sector, severely restricting urgently needed immigrant labour, and then diverting the political fallout from those issues on to other targets. All while maintaining the fiction — amid scandals, resignations and botched policymaking — that a rightwing party of competent fiscally sensible grownups is the most rational choice.
Why are we clapping for the NHS and carers? Because the Government has a weight of guilt on its shoulders -these extraordinary people have been doing extraordinary life-changing and life-saving work for years as NHS resources have been cut the bone by Government.
When the first cases of Covid-19 in the U.K. were confirmed in late January, Johnson’s Conservative Party government claimed that it was prepared for any eventuality. That turns out to have been a lie. The government’s failure to provide sufficient protective gear, which has so far contributed to the deaths of at least 114 health care workers in Britain, was preventable. Moreover, two separate investigations have now revealed high-level attempts to cover it up.
The BBC’s Panorama showed that the British government’s pandemic stockpile lacked key equipment, such as gowns, visors, swabs, and body bags. The government was, of course, aware of this deficit and yet, even after the pandemic hit the country’s shores, U.K. leaders refused multiple opportunities to bulk-buy PPE. When the lack of supplies became obvious to the public, the government tried to hide the problem by inflating PPE numbers, counting one pair of gloves as two items of PPE.
Another investigation, by the Sunday Times, a decidedly right-leaning newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch that has previously swooned over Johnson, calling him a “rockstar,” showed just how casually the prime minister confronted the pandemic. Johnson had skipped five high-level emergency meetings to discuss the virus, the newspaper reported. He insisted, in a manner reminiscent of U.S. President Donald Trump, that briefing reports be as short as possible. He went on holiday to a country estate, refused to work weekends, and attended a fundraising ball.
Anyone with a brain can see that this is a scandal unfolding in real-time and that where the government neglected one public sector, it is now neglecting another. Some 179 British servicemen were killed in the invasion of Iraq. The Ministry of Defence failed to provide the British army with sufficient equipment. Now we have already lost more than half that in the NHS and, just like families of dead soldiers were told to keep their mouths shut, NHS workers are being warned by their employers not to speak to the media.
The current crisis has been a decade in the making. Johnson and his Tory colleagues have spent years undermining the NHS, using the excuse of austerity measures to cut salaries and reduce benefits,
The Government is morally bankrupt. It is also dumb fuck stupid.
It spectacularly failed in its response to the pandemic, by cutting funding from essential health services and research before the crisis, and later by denying its existence and its severity. We had time to prepare for this pandemic at the national, local, and household level, even if the government was terribly lagging, but we squandered it because of widespread asystemic thinking and just plain stupid advice.
Here is a perfect micro example of this out-of-touch, insane policy-in-the-making. Eyal Winter, an economist who has been advising the government over how to ease the national lockdown, says one solution could be for pub landlords to ration how much beer they serve, to one or two pints, serving it by someone in a mask and then asking the customer to lift their own mask to drink out of a single-use straw, before asking the customer to go home.
The idea is a joke. The truth is the only way venues can reopen is when social distancing is no longer necessary, which is exactly why more than half of hospitality venues and as many as two million jobs will not survive the lockdown. With job losses mounting across the economy many people will just have less money to spend on shopping and nights out after the lockdown ends. There is a genuine fear that some venues have closed their doors for good.
Events have fallen like dominoes. Some, like the Olympics, have been postponed, while others, like Wimbledon, have been cancelled completely. Training schedules have been ripped up and staff furloughed. Players are taking wage cuts and broadcasters are warning of lost earnings in the hundreds of millions.
The safety measures introduced by supermarkets and DIY stores, with people asked to stand 2 metres apart, are a non-starter in bars, clubs, pubs, restaurants, beauty salons, barbers, hairdressers and gyms. And they don’t work for many, many other businesses
Many high-street law firms, for example, could face closure this year as a result of lockdown. Residential property transactions have ground to a halt. Reduction in court hearings has massively impacted on the amount of work available — while social distancing and the lack of face-to-face meetings is causing difficulty delivering in other areas, such as the execution of wills.
Elsewhere, small firms have suffered from the decline in overall activity — particularly from service industries such as retail, leisure and hospitality. The fate of the high-street law firm is thus intrinsically bound to that of other small businesses.
Retail was already having a tough time. The lockdown and its ripple effects will speed up the huge structural changes underway in our High Streets. Some small firms may simply run out of cash and throw in the towel. Some larger retailers are also in administration. Many others will be looking at the profitability of stores and whether they could hand the keys back to landlords.
The public transport and travel industry are in disarray. Introducing social distancing at airports, for example, is physically impossible. In fact, social distancing does not work in any form of public transport, let alone aviation. Just how many people you can get through an airport, a tube station, a rail station safely?
Some airlines might not survive this crisis. Others could perish in the aftermath. And those that come through it will be smaller. Any social distancing will impact revenues and make it incredibly difficult when margins are already slim.
According to Guardian journalist Mark Easton, “it’s hoped the Thursday night clapping for key workers is the sound of a nation discovering itself again and, denied the luxury of self-indulgence, our eyes are opened to what really matters.”
Lockdown, it is said, has unblocked a spring of neighbourliness that will flow long after restrictions are lifted. Perhaps. And those of us, desperate for a night out when the time comes? Unless the Government comes to its sense and ends the lockdown soon, it may be too late.
And so, inevitably, in the absence of trustworthy leadership, people are being forced to make critical decisions alone. Because we now know that the cure for coronavirus is worse than the disease. The Government is not protecting its citizens. Boris Johnson must apologise, resign, and let a real leader take charge.
