It is 15 weeks since I last visited Abbey Park in Leicester (A lot can happen in 15 weeks – over 41 thousand of me fellow citizens can die from the coronavirus for instance – but life must go on). Last time was early spring and now it is early summer but the atmosphere was so much different. I could go on but I don’t see the point. Given the way things are at the moment we really have to enjoy the little things.
There was a time when someone asked you “Are you ok?” and you replied that “You’ve got a bit of a cold” the other person didn’t take a step back and look at you with great suspicion. Well I’ve got a cold, no not the Coronavirus but a cold and you see I’m even at it treat my own symptoms with suspicion. Yes I have visited the coronavirus website and No I have none of the symptoms yet the suspicion lingers.
Welcome to the new Normal. It doesn’t matter what the government might say none of us are going to be the same again. How long this change will last is like most of the things about this pandemic – nobody knows. We can all have a stab at making a suggestion now but with such a fluid situation any sound and rational pronouncement will very quickly prove to be wide of the mark. Perhaps that is what the New Normal is – profound and rapid change that will leave the so called talking heads talking to themselves as the world rattles by.
The one thing I know for certain is that I have a cold.
So today is the first day of the new UK quarantine which on the face of it sounds like a good idea. We’re just about getting to the end of the first wave of the pandemic in Britain and the last thing we need is for travellers from abroad coming here and reintroducing the virus. What is wrong with that? In principle nothing in practice it is totally daft. Firstly, we haven’t got rid of the virus here; Secondly we need the tourist trade as the economy is going to be very weak over the next few months and all those dollars, euros yuan etc will be very welcome indeed and finally the whole system makes a laughing stock of the notion that this is a quarantine at all.
So there is now going to be a frantic effort over the next few weeks to patch together ‘air bridges’ to such places as Spain and Italy and France (not sure what is going to happen with all the ferry traffic to France – Sea Bridge?) in a vain attempt for the Government to try and save face – the whole idea is bonkers.
A number of years ago The Thick of It pilloried New Labour and coalition governments. The show gave the world many great things but the word ‘Omnishambles‘ was probably the most memorable (In a world of Dominic Cummings Malcolm Tucker looks almost genteel). The Thick of It ended because amongst other things Armando Iannucci claimed the real world was just too bonkers to satirise (of course getting a big pay cheque from HBO for Veep might also have something to do with it).
Yesterday proved Iannucci correct. Not only did we have a sort of U turn of the Mogg Conga – even though the conga will continue all MPs can now vote by proxy if needs be due to the pandemic considerations, but not child care or other problems travelling to Westminster to vote. If you are unaware the Government i.e Jacob Rees-Mogg hates the idea of digital voting for reasons that don’t stand any scrutiny. However, the most bizarre thing about all this, and that is saying something, is that remote voting is to continue in the House of Lords, you know the undemocratic, unelected upper house who Owere more concerned about democratic accountability to ensure that none of its bloated membership were disenfranchised than the lower house.
Then came the true trainwreck of the day – the new be nasty to people from abroad quarantine procedures that is going to be introduced. Apparently this plays very well in focus groups so Dominic is instisting this be introduced which yesterday it was to widespread derision from anyone who takes the time to pay the slightest attention to the details. Apparently it is going to be enforced by the ‘world class‘ Border Force and I wish them the best of luck because just one look at the list of exemptions means that the only people who are really going to be inconvenienced by this nonsense will be British citizens coming back from their summer break in southern Europe. You know the policy is nonsense when it is attacked by the arch Tory rebel Theresa May. Expect another U turn i.e scrapping, by the end of the month.
So this was all in one day – now that is really ‘World Class’.
According to the adverts installing new technology into your system is seamless – just click click click and everything is ready to go. It is a whole lot better than the days of installing a new printer onto a Windows 95 computer (I’m much older than that but my vague memories of MS DOS was that what printers there were lead much simpler lives and so the installation wasn’t that bad – I suspect that is my memory playing tricks!) butb there are still bumpos along the way which need to be smoothed out
As a result of one of these bumps I have had to revisit my Procreate library and I soon discovered that the Procreate file format doesn’t like to be copied from one copy of the app to another. Forntuantely, the Lingua Franca of illustation files PSD worked a treat. This meant that I revisited some old files I had forgotten about including this one which I couldn’t resist reworking a little for the new decade(?)
Well that will be a spring that will last long in the memories. Over the last three months I think I have written enough. Lets us just hope that the summer is a lot more uneventful than the previous 3 months. I suspect that is a forlorn hope!
It is very easy to see things are going to ratshit. As the heat rises so is the likelihood that the United States of America is going go up in flames. Well that seems to be the view of many of the opinion writers in the New York Times. Whether this is true or not it is hard to say from this side of the Atlantic for two reasons: I am not American and have no idea what the American mind is on the latest riots (This assumes that there is one such mind view but what little I do know about America is that there is no such thing). Instead I hope that whatever happens in America slowly calms down and perhaps saner voices may prevail. However, this is an election year and I doubt this is going to happen.
Back on this die of the pond we all seem to be entering a new delusional state whereby the pandemic is coming to an end when there is not one jot of evidence that this is the case. Yesterday 324 people died from the virus and another 2095 case were reported. This virus hasn’t gone away and there is every chance that we could be heading for another spike. I hope that doesn’t happen but at this stage it just can’t be ruled out and if this were to be the case then what little residual of good will this government has may well evaporate. After all for the last three months we have been told what a world class effort we have put in and yet we still have ended up with some of the worst death rates in the world (I know it is very very difficult country with country but even given that we’re not going to come out that good.)
And then there is a problem that is the huge hole in the economy here and around the world. The next year is going to be very hard indeed and it will take a government of exceptional talent to steer us through this. If you know of one please let us know where they are because there doesn’t appear to be any here either at the United Kingdom or national level.
So are things going to ratshit. Strangely I don’t think they are because you see I’m an historian who knows that this country/countries have faced much worse challenges in the past and come through them battered and bruised but still standing. In short we have endured many things and the country is same: we moan about things; get angry about others but then settle down and muddle through to the next day.
That doesn’t mean that Dominic Cummings should still be in a job nor that Boris Johnson is really any good as a Prime Minister. No it means I trust in the people to get through whatever nonsense is thrown at us over the next 12 months. I do hope I am right.
So it is almost a week since the Dominic Cummings story broke and we have learnt a great deal about where we are as a country. However, perhaps the most important lesson that we have learnt is that at best the government is not very good at politics. This matters. I am not at all sure whether Dominic Cummings actually broke the letter of the law when he drove from London to Durham but that is irrelevant to how the this story is shaping public opinion. What has taken hold is the fact that the second (or is that first?) most important in the British government has behaved in such a way as to cast doubt on all the suffering, however small, we have all been through during the first lockdown. This is what has really built up the furry and this in turn has exposed the conceit at the heart of the Johnson government – Cummings has got his finger on the pulse of the nation. He clearly has not. Instead what he appears to have is utter contempt for the great unwashed – so much for being the People’s Tribune. Instead of contrition we have had hubris – why, for example, did he not hold the press conference when the story broke on Saturday morning? He did have reasons for his behaviour, whether you agree with them or not. Instead, we were treated to press releases that were, at best, an approximation of the truth and attempt to throw mud at the papers who had the temerity to report on the story.
Boris Johnson has also destroyed much of the trust he had by continuing this contempt by saying he had looked into this and there was nothing to see so please move on. That went down like a lead balloon and he found his authority shot to pieces. All of the stupid tweets of support, including from the Attorney General for England and Wales*, only underlined the contempt that the government was showing towards the people. It was culminated in the way that yesterday when Matt Hancock insinuated, whether intentionally or not, that people were a bit thick for not having picked up on the fact that there was the Dominic Cummings’ get of jail clause as he was at the press conference when it was announced. So you see it was all your fault for not being as brainy as Dominic. (I may well be being unfair to the Health Secretary of England as I am sure he didn’t mean it in that way but given the febrile atmosphere at the moment that is how it came across.)
The story now is that the government are going to tough it out. They have an 80 seat majority and in a week or so’s time this will be soon forgotten – especially when the Premier league restarts – I guess this could be called the Bread and Circus approach. However, this does matter because we are nowhere near the end of this lockdown. We might have weathered the first wave but we don’t know how things will develop as the summer gives way to the first chill of autumn. If things do take a turn for the worse, let us all hope that isn’t the case, then trust in what the government has to say about this and what we all have to do becomes vitally important. (It is now but I think at the moment it has taken a huge knock.)
This morning I heard a government warning about the Coronavirus. In it tried to define what Staying Alert meant which amongst other things means:
“Do not leave home if you or anyone else has symptoms”
My first reaction was to think, ‘Unless you are Dominic Cummings”. And that is the true damage of this whole mess. Far fewer people will accept such messages at face value and this could well be vital in the weeks and months ahead. This is all as a result of hubris, incompetence and contempt. This won’t bring down the government. It won’t stop Boris Johnson from being Prime Minister. It may have little or no affect in four plus years time when there is likely to be another election. But it has severely damaged Boris Johnson’s reputation and that is very difficult to recover from – Just ask Sir John Major.
*Durham Police are now fully investigating Cummings’ behaviour whilst in County Durham and they will undoubtedly pass the file onto the file on to the the county senior prosecutor who works for the Attorney General for England and Wales who has already compromised herself on this case.
It is a rare spectacle to see the reputation of a government collapse almost overnight. Usually it takes months or perhaps years as people come to realise that those who run the country are beneath contempt. This long bank holiday weekend has condensed the whole process. On Thursday, whilst the mood was getting restless, it was fair to say the government still had support. Yes the latest set of instructions were confusing but mostly they were being followed – sort of.
Then came the trainwreck of Dominic Cummings and that trust is now in tatters. It really doesn’t matter whether Cummings followed the letter of the law, debatable, he certainly didn’t follow the spirit. In politics that matters especially when the rest of the country has had to endure the lockdown. This is why this story has got wings. Everyone can understand the implications of what they have had to forgo due to the lockdown. Now we all see that we were either not told the whole truth or that it really is one rule for the plebs and one rule for the rulers. This builds resentment.
Of course we have been here before. Just a few months ago we had all the heat and light about the prorogation of Parliament. This seemed like a big thing and it was, at the time, but it didn’t really affect many people’s lives. The lockdown has. The lockdown is something we all understand and the sight of someone at the heart of the government making a mockery of the whole thing is something that will be remembered.
Today some of the papers are trying to move on from the story and splash that shops will soon be open as if nothing has happened yesterday. Don’t get me wrong this new is a big thing but it isn’t the news that many people will have heard yesterday and that is the real problem of the Cummings affair. This government has forfeited most of the goodwill they had. It is political incompetence of the first order. I will give just one example of the level of madness that has now gripped the government.
Yesterday, one of the senior ministers that gave their wholesome support of Dominic Cummings was the Attorney General for England and Wales. She is supposed to be independent of the political fray because she has the authority to initiate or stop prosecutions yet yesterday, on the day that Durham Police let it be known they were going to look into the matter again, she effectively made the investigation null and void. She runs the Crown Prosecution Service so should a file be sent to them for a decision on whether to prosecute their boss has already said that Cummings has done nothing wrong. So much for the independence of the office of the Attorney General for England and Wales.
Whether that is a fair statement is not the point. Dominic Cummings is so important to the Prime Minister that stupid things are demanded and compliant holders of what were once important offices of state jump to their master’s bidding. I wonder if Geoffrey Cox, her predecessor, would have entertained such nonsense but then again he has been a QC longer than the current Attorney General for England and Wales has been a barrister.
There in is the problem exposed at the heart of the Cummings affair. The Prime Minister has shown himself incapable of running the country without Dominic Cummings. He has thrown away most of his Prime Ministerial authority over the weekend. If you don’t believe me then why did the Prime Minister tell the public on Saturday that there was nothing to see here (I paraphrase ) only to have to come out again on Sunday when few people believed his reassurances from the previous day. He now appears to be the one who is taking the orders from Cummings who, lest we forget, has no official standing in the government other than as a chief advisor. No one voted for him yet everyone in Government appears to bend over backwards to protect him. That reinforces the notion that he and not Boris Johnson really runs things.
How long will this whole thing rumble on? I have no idea. Will Cummings go? I doubt it unless Boris Johnson grows a pair and dumps him but even this is now too late. The damage has been done. Whether Boris Johnson is a busted flush only time will tell but he, and his government, no longer have the respect they once had on Thursday evening. Once respect has been lost it is impossible to regain and it is usually replaced by contempt. All this damage to save a special advisor – what does that say about Boris Johnson as a Prime Minister? I suspect a lot of people now have a much more diminished view of him than they did on Thursday.
Events, dear boy, Events.
P.S.
As I write this I see a junior minister has resigned over the affair. Under normal circumstance not a big thing but it just adds further flames to the fire and will ensure that yesterday wasn’t then end of the story. What a complete fuck up.
After all the excitement of actually getting out and enjoying the spring weather it was back to the garden.
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