Wednesday 17 February 2021

Tory morality stops at the border

According to reports, the Foreign Secretary is today urging the UN Security Council to seek temporary ceasefires in war zones across the world in order to allow the citizens to be vaccinated against Covid-19. In principle, calling for ceasefires is always a worthy thing to do, and it’s impossible to be critical of the call itself. However, it’s hard to interpret a call for ‘temporary’ ceasefires as not suggesting a rather relaxed attitude to death by bomb or bullet once the population have all been properly vaccinated against one specific disease. Perhaps he has it in mind that any temporary ceasefire creates a basis for extension and a longer-term solution, although if that is what he is thinking, he hasn’t said it.

What he has said is “Global vaccination coverage is essential to beating coronavirus … We have a moral duty to act, and a strategic necessity to come together to defeat this virus”. That to many will sound more like pursuit of the interests of the UK than those of the war-torn countries themselves. Indeed, the report suggested that he would warn that 'allowing Covid-19 to spread in areas without a vaccination roll-out will increase the risk of new variants taking hold', confirming the impression that he’s more worried about uncontained outbreaks generating new variants which will spread back to the UK than he is about protecting the people in the war zones themselves. His words about moral duty might sound very idealistic, but his idea of a moral duty to protect people seems to stop at the UK’s border. It shouldn’t really surprise us; it has always been evident that the UK’s current governing cult was going to be a selfish rather than altruistic actor on the world stage. The only surprising thing is that they’re being so blatant about it.

1 comment:

dafis said...

What did you expect from Boris and UK Government in general ? Conflict zones are "good for trade" and our multi billion arms and other defence products/services industries are far too important to suspend atrocities indefinitely. No doubt UK sabre rattlers can muster usual gibberish about "justified responses" and "standing shoulder to shoulder with our xxxx(insert nation) allies" but the just war theory is now old hat replaced by a total adherence to the cynical world view driven by profit and posturing.