The old headline which some
say is apocryphal but which others
attribute to the Times in 1957, which read “Heavy Fog in the Channel.
Continent cut off.”, serves as a classic indicator of that special English
sense of being exceptional and at the centre of everything. We had a
contemporary indication of that same attitude this week, when Sir Somebody Tufton-Bufton MP declared
that if England does something different to what he referred to as ‘the principalities’
then it is not England which is out of step, but everybody else. Given his
obvious ignorance of the nature of the UK and its component parts, it will
surely come as a surprise to no-one to discover that
he is, like his party’s leader, yet another Old Etonian, another product of
that network of so-called ‘educational’ institutions which seem to exist
primarily to remove any feelings of empathy and humanity from their charges and
replace them with an innate sense of superiority and exceptionalism. Accurate and
useful knowledge seems to play only a minor role in the curriculum.
Anyway, the basic difference between the
more civilised parts of the UK on the one hand and England on the other in this
case is about whether it is sensible to
take formal precautions to try and slow the spread of Omicron before it gets
completely out of control, or whether we should rely on the common sense of
people to take their own decisions about the level of risk involved and wait
until the health service is overwhelmed before acting. And the problem for the
civilised parts is that it’s only when England acts that money will be
available in the quantities required to support the affected individuals and businesses.
Notwithstanding certain obvious exceptions,
and without playing down the damage that those exceptions can do in spreading
the virus, it is true that many people, even in England where their leader is still
exhorting them to party on and leading by example, are showing a great deal of
common sense and voting with heir feet. Some of the businesses affected are
effectively being closed by customer withdrawal rather than by government
dictat – something which the Chancellor apparently considers a good thing since
he doesn’t need to subsidise them, but which will not feel quite so good from
the perspective of either the businesses themselves or those working in them.
The argument of the so-called ‘freedom
lovers’ of the swivel-eyed crazy tendency which has infiltrated and taken over
the Tory party is that setting rules infringes our rights to take our own
decisions. I suppose we should be glad that they haven’t – not yet anyway –
tried to apply this to certain other offences, like murder or theft. There is a
sense in which they have a point: what events have shown us is that, whether we
are given rules or merely guidance, most people do the sensible thing. For most
of us the outcome (in terms of our behaviour) is much the same. In the same
way, most of us don’t need a law banning us from killing other people to prevent
us from doing it. The difference between rules and guidance, though, is about
the lack of enforcement. With rules, we can and do take action against those
who transgress and endanger the rest of us (unless, of course, they are cabinet
ministers, advisers, Tory MPs or donors), whereas with guidance, they are free
to continue to act as they wish (and may even gain unfair advantage from their
actions). Specifically, in this instance, to spread a virus variant the potency
of which is still not fully known or understood. Underlying their argument is
an ideological aversion to any action being taken collectively rather than
individually.
Some might object to the distinction drawn
above between England and the more civilised countries of the UK, but doesn’t
this go to the heart of an important aspect of what civilisation is about? Acting
collectively, in the interests of the many rather than the few, setting rules
which allow us to live side by side in a commonly-agreed framework rather than
allowing individuals to do as they please regardless of the consequences for others
– aren’t these all aspects of a developed
civilisation? Under the leadership of an ignorant and exceptionalist elite,
England is rapidly turning its back on civilised values. And that applies not
only in the specific dealt with here, but in the treatment of the least fortunate
in society and of refugees, to pick just two examples. Remaining attached to
what England is becoming is not a future which offers much hope to anyone.
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