I don’t know about you, but I was appalled by Rishi Sunak’s assault on the sick last week. He patronised, he scapegoated and he blamed.
Not content with going after experts, civil servants, teachers, lawyers, doctors, nurses, rail workers, and anyone else they can think of to try to divide us, they’ve gone for the unwell.
Listening to Sunak’s speech (announcing policy, once again, outside Parliament and in contravention of our democratic norms) I thought I wouldn’t give the bloke so much as a ‘Fit Note’ to carry on in his job.
In fact I took it upon myself to write him a Sick Note.
By popular demand, I’ve made that Sick Note ‘signable’ – so please, if you concur, add your name and share with friends and family.
You can sign Rishi Sunak’s Sick Note at Action Network here.
I’m not listening to Chancellor Sunak’s Spring Statement.
Here’s why.
He’s already told us what we need to know: ‘The government cannot be expected to solve every problem.’
He’s not kidding.
He and his government have certainly created enough problems.
They’ve cocked up our supply chains with the sclerosis and bureaucracy of their botched Brexit. They’ve pushed workers away so that we can’t pick our fruit, we can’t pick our vegetables, and our farmers can’t bring their meat to market because they don’t have the staff to do the job.
Road hauliers, pushed away by Brexit, aren’t here in sufficient numbers, so that what we do have, we can’t distribute.
All of these contribute to inflationary pressure.
We can see it in the prices at the shops, rising each and every week.
Inflation is running wild, and wages and benefits aren’t keeping up. Everyone is poorer.
Adding to this problem – not solving it – will be Sunak’s National Insurance rise. This is a tax – on workers and employers – at exactly the wrong time.
He has let it be known that he might tweak the thresholds at which this additional tax bites, but really? Big f*cking deal. There should be no NI hike at all. There should be a reduction.
And don’t forget, these guys are masters, absolute masters – with weasel words and diverting headlines to distract the media – at making it look like they are giving, when in actual fact they are taking away. They’re brilliant at it. For a day or two, in all the hullabaloo and earnest analysis, we can’t see what they’ve done. Only when the smoke clears, a week or three later, does it become clear. And by then it is too late.
This time, let’s not be fooled.
Because for a dozen years, that is precisely what they have done. Under the guise of prudent economics and a ‘balanced approach’, they’ve chipped away and chipped away at our infrastructure, our health service, our local services and our benefits, and now, when the British people face a historic cost of living crisis, what have they got for us? Nothing. They ‘can’t be expected to solve every problem’.
On energy prices, they’ve promised a loan to offset soaring price hikes. A loan! This is your government, in your hour of need. Men and women paid by you to really grip problems. But they say they ‘can’t be expected’ to help you, and instead they’re behaving more like payday loan sharks, bunging you a few quid now, only to come back later to claw it back, when you’ll probably be in an even worse position.
On fuel, they’ve said they might take 5p off a litre of fuel. 5p! 5p is what Tesco might offer you as a reward for doing your shopping there. It is not what a government does to remedy a dramatic crisis. And remember, half the pump price is fuel duty and VAT. Sunak will still be taking about 80p from you in tax for every litre you buy.
VAT remains on energy too. As the prices rocket, so does Rishi’s revenue.
He can afford to do more.
We cannot afford for him to do so little.
Rishi Sunak and his family are richer than Queen. He is a man who will never, ever have to worry about the price of a meal, the price of fuel, or the cost of a warm home. Never. Rich people can make fair choices for all, but they cannot know the fear and the disabling horror of lying awake over how to pay for the basics. If they did, they could never say, in the face of a historic crisis, that they ‘can’t be expected to solve every problem’. Such a sentence wouldn’t even flash across their minds.
When he says he can’t be expected to solve every problem, he really means he’s not going to solve any problem. He really means ‘suck it up’. The ‘whatever it takes’ Chancellor has, in short order, become the high tax, no heart Chancellor. The ‘whatever it takes for me to build a war-chest for the next election (when I might be leader)’ Chancellor.
On their own admission, the Tories ‘can’t be expected’ to solve our problems. Their record, from austerity to Brexit, proves the contrary: they’ve created and contributed to our problems. They’ve ground Britain and its people down for a dozen years. It’s time for change. It’s time to take the country back from people who just don’t get it. It’s time to #takebackBritain.
Why aren’t the British people furious? As we sit sheepishly indoors, in fear, for ourselves and our loved ones – and, increasingly, in mourning – with no realistic prospect of an end to lockdown, wondering just how sky-high these appalling death tolls will go, wondering how our economy will look if and when the new dawn comes, wondering how to earn money in the meantime, wondering how, safely, even to buy food, why aren’t we screaming blue murder at our embarrassing, disgraceful, criminally-negligent excuse for a government?
It’s not, I think, that the PM wound up in hospital and by some accounts nearly died – though that did give us pause. Even his detractors were shaky when he went into hospital, including, I’ll admit, me. But, human-story distraction though that was, it’s not the underlying story.
I suggest the real reason we are not, yet, furious is that we are being successfully played on two, related fronts. First, we’re being told “now is not the time” to challenge leaders and scrutinise their choices. [E.g. Lucy Allan MP’s tweet, pictured. And a number of other MPs tweeted along similar lines, in what was clearly an instruction from Conservative HQ.] We are not, for instance, to question their reliance on “the” science, even if that science might appear to be entirely at odds with the science of the World Health Organisation, other countries, and common sense. To express concern is to be unpatriotic, is to undermine the “Herculean” collective effort, even to undermine the NHS and our heroes on the front line, just when they need our support most.
Clever.
Scrutiny, then, is not for now, while we’re in the thick of crisis. The unspoken implication is that there’ll be a time for questions later, when the hurly-burly’s done; then (but only then) there can be investigations and inquiries. As if inquiries ever proved to be anything other than lost balls and long grass.
Second, we’re being invited to think of our country as being “at war” with the virus. [E.g. “We must act like any wartime government.” – Johnson, 17 Mar 20. “This national battle” – Johnson, Easter Sunday.] This language also inspires – and demands – unity, stifling healthy criticism and debate. After all, we are, surely, together in this. We must all play our part. Undermining leadership at a time of war is tantamount to treason. It takes a brave soul to speak up, to put his or her head above the parapet in such circumstances. But it’s a false notion of course. The virus doesn’t know who we are. It does not think it has “the UK” in its sights. There is no war. The language and metaphor of war is being deployed, not to make our situation clearer or easier to understand, but to insulate those responsible for serial failures from scrutiny and blame.
Clearly these are related tactics, deliberately designed simultaneously to deflect blame and silence the masses. And, so far, they are working. If surveys [e.g. by YouGov] are to be believed, a startling number of us feel the Government is doing a good job. Friends, let’s see this for what it is, expose it, and fight back. Thousands of us are dying every day. How many of those deaths are down to incredible paucity of leadership? If we are not to be angry now, then when?
This post brings together two twitter threads I wrote today:
1. Now is not the time.
Now is not the time to ask Where are the masks and the gowns?
Now is not the time to ask Where are the tests?
Now is not the time to ask Why don’t the tests work?
Now is not the time to ask why we’ve bought millions more tests – and they don’t work, either.
Now is not the time to ask Where are the Rolls Royce ventilators?
Now is not the time to ask Where are the Dysons?
Now is not the time to discuss pay rises for nurses.
Now is not the time to ask when the financial support – if it is real – will actually arrive?
Now is not the time to ask Why didn’t we act earlier, when we knew this was coming?
Now is not the time to challenge the government.
Now is not the time for Parliament to be recalled.
Now is not the time for journalists to challenge Ministers.
Now is not the time to ask why ‘herd immunity’ was a serious strategy.
Now is not the time to ask, lockdowns aside, whether ‘herd immunity’ is not still the strategy.
Now is not the time to ask How do we actually get out of this?
Now is not the time to ask Who’s actually in charge?
Now is not the time to depress people.
Now is not the time to frighten people.
Now is not the time.
Now is not the time to ask whether our loved ones, in their thousands, needed to die.
Now is not the time to ask How many more of our loved ones need to die?
Now is not the time.
2. I’d call it a war, too
I’d call it a war, too, if I wanted to characterise myself as Churchill. If I wanted people to look outwards, somewhere else, over there, to a conveniently invisible enemy, and rally blindly behind me.
If I wanted to deflect responsibility for my hollow words, my failure to deliver even basic testing, masks and gloves. If I wanted to divert attention away from my arrogant denial of the threat, even though it was clearly coming.
I’d call it a war, too, if I wanted to divert attention away from my murderous, eugenicist, early policy of “herd immunity”. From my lies about being “guided by the science” while ignoring the advice of the WHO and countries already in crisis.
I’d call it a war, too, if I wanted to divert attention away from the complete absence of an exit plan, from my failure to put in place the infrastructure of tracing, home testing and domestic monitoring so that lockdown could actually one day end.
From my ideological refusal to accept help from, or co-operate with, the EU, even if it costs British lives. From my party’s failure to back the NHS for a full decade, its decimation of the police, social care and so many front-line services we now know are literally vital.
I’d call it a war too, if I thought I might get (and deserve) the blame for leading a country towards the highest death rate in Europe. I’d call it a war, too, if I were playing any part in this murderous, inhuman government of spin, lies and criminal negligence.
I’d call it a war, too, if the language of a common, external, military enemy were my last shield, my only hope, the only remaining explanation for the blood of thousands of fellow citizens on my hands.
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Top image added 27/1/21 – sadly now is still not the time.
