Beginning to See the Light: Black Monday…

 

‘How does it feel

When you treat me like you do..’

 

Monday was, in the words of our leader (Johnson, in case you’re wondering), ‘Freedom Day.’ Whilst all frustrated ravers were raving, the NHS, social care, schools, supermarkets, hauliers, hospitality, and transport sectors were left to pick up the pieces from the chaos it unleashed. History might end-up naming this Black Monday.

Johnson has scientists on one side who fear the worst, and economists on the other who want the accelerator hard-down for growth. A situation which he is totally unsuited for, one requiring leadership, and clear thought. As the weekends shenanigans show he is indecisive, initially he was exploiting the pilot testing scheme’ to avoid Covid quarantine before following the lead of his chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and performing a U-turn.

For Johnson the advent of Covid and all its side-issues can be viewed as apparent misfortune, exposing him the shallow charlatan he really is. Being PM is part of collective government, whereas he is an egomaniac, relying on charm, humour, and an addiction to publicity, in addition to being economical with the truth.

Politically, he handicapped himself in 2019 when he purged anyone with any ability from his cabinet for fear of disloyalty leaving himself with ‘yes’ people. A situation exacerbated by his own lack of attention to detail, e.g., he was often absent from key meetings of COBRA, or with his mind elsewhere.

 

‘History might end-up naming this Black Monday’

 

Perversely his faults often explain his popularity; a supporter in Hartlepool who was challenged by an interviewer cataloguing Johnson’s faults, replied that Johnson reminded her of herself.

Unfortunately, charisma alone isn’t sufficient. Black Monday was a huge gamble, if a third wave hits us, charisma may not be enough to save him, and with Covid case numbers predicted to rise to 100,000 or even 200,000 daily, the third-worst level in the world, that may not be far off.

This is why the use of the non-existent VIP ‘pilot scheme’ to avoid isolating is so controversial, it shows different rules for them. No different to Michael Gove who invoked the same loophole after taking his son to the Champions League final in Portugal.

This exemplifies the weak, divisive leadership that sets our ‘betters’ over us. There is Prince Charles boasting that he’d wear no mask at Exeter cathedral this week, in addition the Duchess of Cornwall is known to ‘dislike wearing a mask’. Too bad! For the royals, I believe it is a mistake to ally themselves with raving right-wingers who exploit the harmless mask as a symbol of tyranny.

Last week we had the stupidity of the England fan with a lighted flare in his bottom, he at least had an excuse; 20 cans of cider and 3- grammes of cocaine. This week we have Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee, declaring: ‘I believe the real purpose of masks is social control.’ The public, he swore, had been seized by ‘Stockholm syndrome’, the government using ‘fear to manipulate the population of a free democratic country’. ‘How far a proud nation has allowed itself to fall!’

Graham, the UK has managed C.130,000 deaths from Covid, and globally the figure is around 4million, isn’t that sufficient? Wearing a mask can reduce transmission by 25%. Polls this week have again shown that the public understands the precautionary principle better than their leader and his MP’s do.

After painting himself into a corner with his ‘irreversible’ pledge disaster, a third-wave is already besetting an already exhausted NHS, only we aren’t supposed to know. The Health Service Journal reported that three NHS chief executives have been banned from speaking to the media about the ‘unsustainable pressure’ their hospitals are facing and banned from commenting on the reckless removal of masks, social distancing and indoor gathering limits. They confirmed that NHS chiefs’ WhatsApp group has ‘quite a few angry people’ commenting on leaders’ failure to signal the present danger. ‘There is a sense that we are expected [by government] to pretend it’s all over.’

 

‘a third-wave is already besetting an already exhausted NHS’

 

Nick Hulme, the chief executive of East Suffolk and North Essex trust said, ‘We are breaking every previous A&E record every day,’ and not in a good way, he tells me. Covid cases are filling beds. ‘This is still a major crisis and we expect a third more cases for the rest of this year as they relax the rules.’

‘The test-and-trace debacle has caused a crisis,’ he says. He has lost 32 staff who’ve been pinged by the NHS Covid app and told to isolate for 10 days. ‘Two senior consultants pinged off for 10 days means we have lost 200 outpatient appointments and 200 operations, leaving an entire team redundant.’ Whilst this week’s announcement exempting ‘pinged’ health and care staff from quarantine helps, the unions are, unsurprisingly, up in arms as their members are once again in the frontline taking the Covid bullets.

Hulme’s waiting list is the highest since records began: ‘and we’re doing well,’ he says. Back in 2010, the NHS had virtually no one waiting for more than 18 weeks; now Hulme has 4,500 patients waiting for more than 52 weeks. The government has also quietly dropped the 18-week measure from its NHS bill. The national list had risen to 4.5 million people before Covid struck, caused by a decade of NHS austerity when funding per capita fell: now Sajid Javid is warning that waiting lists may reach 13 million.

Following on from Black Monday, last evening (Tuesday) we had Dominic Cummings continuing to trash Johnson. Most of his revelations shouldn’t come as a surprise, even his statement that Johnson was only bought in to ‘get Brexit done’ is old news. What it highlighted was Cumming’s ability, love or loathe him he was the mastermind behind the ‘leave’ vote in 2016, and Johnson’s 2019 election victory. In doing so he, or rather the Tory’s, reached out to a new audience, one in thrall with their vision of Britannia and regressive policies. Any reader in doubt I refer you back to the lunatic quotes from Graham Brady, above.

Johnson, as a politician, doesn’t passionately believe in much, except his own advancement and survival.  What he did was to abandon progression for regression with the immediate, short-term gain of a ‘red wall’ strategy. As a result, in his 2019 landslide only 20% of black voters voted Tory. In 2015 it had been 23%. Making grandiose step-change promises to predominantly white voters in previously Labour northern seats, pitting them against metropolitan diversity and southern ‘elites’, was more profitable in terms of votes.

But he doesn’t have a step-change plan, and certainly no game-changing money with which to cement their loyalty. A ‘levelling-up fund’ of just £4.8bn. A training pot of £111m. And from yesterday’s big levelling-up speech in Coventry, £50m for new football pitches and a plea for ideas from the public. Hardly a new world. Even the new royal yacht project is getting £200m. Just this week, a group of 50 Conservative MPs called for extra investment in northern England. As his former aide Dominic Cummings said, ‘Crap speech (same he’s given pointlessly umpteen times) supporting crap slogan.’

So, to plan B: the culture war, the war on ‘woke.’ Of course, nothing is as certain in politics as the Tory’s ability to reinvent themselves and to ensure they retain the God-given right to govern. After the abuse heaped on England’s black footballers following their defeat by Italy, senior Tories sought to distance themselves from their tacit approval of the racism that the England team had taken the knee against. ‘Both Priti Patel and Boris Johnson distanced themselves from the earlier comments by Priti Patel and Boris Johnson, stressing that there would, of course, be zero tolerance for racism and 100% support for our brave boys.’

 

‘Both Priti Patel and Boris Johnson distanced themselves from the earlier comments by Priti Patel and Boris Johnson’

 

Their retreat was completed when Steve Baker, the influential MP who did so much to drag us into the wilderness that is Brexit, felt able to rebuke Johnson on how the party is now positioned on race.

‘We just have to get alongside those players who are taking the knee, and understand they are not saying ‘defund the police’; they’re not anti-capitalist,’ Baker said. They were, he continued – stating a fact most can see as blindingly obvious – seeking to show ‘solidarity with those who suffer racism’.

In addition to Steve there was Conservative MP Johnny Mercer, once tipped as a future party leader who, in response to England international Tyrone Mings publicly blames Priti Patel for creating the toxicity that led to fellow players being racially abused after Sunday’s Euro 2020 final, said: ‘The painful truth is that this guy is completely right,’ adding that he is ‘very uncomfortable with the position we Conservatives are needlessly forcing ourselves into’.

However, anyone that thought the all-conquering Tory culture-war machine might be finally derailed by the courage of England’s football heroes and the overwhelming decency of the majority that cheered them, misunderstands the purpose and aims of the culture war. This is merely a temporary tactical retreat. For the government, the culture war keeps giving, creating an electoral bloc that backs the Tories against their ‘woke’ enemies, real and imagined.

Part of this success has been due to their opponents’ failure to understand the situation. Reports from thinktanks and pollsters that promise to defuse the culture wars by reassuring us that the public isn’t really so divided miss the real point. They are saying that the culture war consists of a debate about the ‘real England’, one that can be resolved by facts and data, whereas it is more nebulous, like Brexit it is based on manufactured narratives that seek to mould an England in their own image.

The culture warriors’ story, as told by the government and most of the press, depicts England as the victim of those who unfairly cry racism at every opportunity.

The one lasting effect of last summers’ Black Lives Matter protests was the growing acceptance of racism as something structural and institutional. But when it comes to these debates about the ‘real England’, we argue about the country and its intentions, leaving us trapped between ‘England is racist, 100%’ (Stormzy) and the retort that this claim is ‘100% wrong’ (Sajid Javid).

The events of the last 10-days have shown the futility of discussing racism in this country.  The players were lauded with achieving that elusive liberal dream, ‘progressive patriotism’ of the ‘real England’. In reality, after 120-minutes and penalty’s it was back to racist graffiti and monkey emojis, reminding us that racism cannot be worn away by the passing of time, or by shifting demographics, or intermarriage and integration.

The Conservatives have successfully connected race to patriotism in the public mind, and invested time and effort into making the allegation of racism an insult, and bullying institutions and organisations that dare to question it. For example:

 

• It commissioned a report whitewashing the existence of structural racism in the country.
• It deployed its own black and ethnic minority members to deny racism was an issue.
• It positioned itself early on in opposition to the Black Lives Matter protests and made political hay out of criticising taking the knee.

 

Their goal, which has been achieved, was to paint anyone who talked about racism as doing Britain down, smearing white people, forcing a woke agenda ‘down our throats’. The Times columnist Melanie Phillips, discussing the abuse suffered by three young black footballers on the BBC on Wednesday, explained that taking the knee was actually the ‘racist gesture’, and that Black Lives Matter was ‘fundamentally anti-white, anti-west, anti-Jew’.

In addition, we are also prevented from understanding the potency of the culture war by’ optimistic progressives’ telling us that it’s all a big misunderstanding, and even if the progressive patriotism fails to happen, the foundations are in-place.

 

‘the only certain truth about their England is that it is a creation’

 

As is the case throughout history, the right is creating its own new stories. We are left with the same nebulousness as Brexit caused, the culture war is not about winning a debate about what constitutes England through factual disputes or actions, it is an aggressive political act with the purpose of creating new dividing lines and therefore new and bigger electoral majorities. It aims to create its own truth, and its own England.

The warriors prize race and identity, depicting an England under assault from minorities and their woke backers, while the Conservatives bravely struggle to keep them at bay.

The only certain truth about their England is that it is a creation, not a reality whose essence can be revealed or discovered once and for all.

Somehow, freedom still seems a long way off.

 

‘What does the billboard say

Come and play, come and play

Forget about the movement’

 

The focus of Philip’s column this week is ‘Freedom Day’ – whether it will be recorded as a blue Monday or even Black Monday, the genie’s out of the bottle, and it’s not going back.

Was a figure of 200,000 new covid cases a day bandied around so that 50,000 didn’t look too bad? Does it make any sense at all to allow GenZ to go clubbing for a month and then require a passport? Does somebody have data to suggest that even if the Delta variant rips through the population, levels of vaccination are high enough for herd immunity to be achieved? It would be nice to think that somebody knows the answers, but I fear not.

And what better sums up Engerland’s finest than the scuffles that broke out on Freedom Day with protesters throwing bottles at the police demanding, er, their freedom.

The fact that for a couple of hours or so Boris and Rishi Sunak claimed to be part of the other, other experiment shows that they really still don’t get it; sad to say that nobody seems particularly surprised by any of Dominic Cummings’ vitriol.

And now we know what value is put on sixteen months of backbreaking and mentally sapping grind and torment; NHS workers have been offered 3% across the board.

Ministers were trotted out to trumpet the fact that this was the decision of an ‘independent’ review; ‘nothing to do with us guv, we’d have given ’em far more. You wouldn’t, would you – you offered 1% and with inflation at 2.1% that’s a far call.

It can be questioned why front line ICU staff, up to their elbows in it should be given the same pay rise as GPs who have been conducting zoom consultations in their pants, and dentists that have been on furlough; but what price a ‘proper’ pay rise?

15% across the board would have cost the country a not insignificant £5bn; but to put it in context, that is a fraction of the money spaffed on Dido Harding’s folly, and pales into insignificance next to the current estimate of £107bn for HS2. Want to get to Birmingham 20 minutes earlier – set your alarm clock.

Are empty shelves the result of the ‘pingdemic’ or Brexit? Who knows, but maybe we’ll find out now that food workers have been excused from self-isolating; at a time of experiments, do you really want to take chances with those handling your scran?

Priti Patel is in the news again because the Police Federation has declared ‘no faith’ in her; keep up chaps, we’re way ahead of you.

Philip concludes with the increasingly ugly and intertwined culture wars where bandwagons are apparently jumped on and off with gay abandon and we have the odd spectacle of Marcus Rashford getting his retaliation in first by saying however much he enjoys the Spectator’s work, it is not justified in suggesting that he has personally benefitted from, er, feeding hungry children that the government has forsaken. Curiouser and curiouser.

Two tracks, just for fun New Order and ‘Blue Monday’ and the powerful ‘Freedom’ from Rage Against the Machine. Enjoy!

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

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