By Sarah Gale
Beethoven once said, “As long as the Austrians have their brown beer and little sausages, they will never revolt.” If the great man were alive today, then he would add football to that list for us Brits.
So what did our great nation revolt against during this government’s privately outsourced pandemic – where cronyism soared, debt was socialised while profits were privatised, and over 150,000 of our citizens unnecessarily died because of this Government’s brinkmanship?
Before the recap on the Great Britain pandemic revolt – how can one possibly forget the overture to the numerous Tory public health failures?! How about for starters, the failure to learn from what was unfolding in Italy and other European countries going in hard to save lives? When did the term, an “acceptable level of deaths” become simply, accepted? This Government didn’t even attempt a Covid-zero strategy.
Johnson acted like an understudy for a walk-on part in an opéra bouffe as he blithely sang, Happy Birthday whilst washing his grubby hands of it all by skipping COBRA meetings and focusing exclusively on his oven-ready Brexit bake-off. He finally got deadly serious when his ‘environmentalist’ paramour threw a tantrum because the private quarters of No.10 were far too vulgar for her privileged palate – the John Lewis look was only for the plebs you understand. It was her civic duty to sod the environment and demand a ‘Napoleonesque Palace of Versailles’ refurb funded by another Tory donor. Our hearts really went out to Carrie in her dire hour of need… “and they say nurses have it tough,” as Partridge once opined.
WHO’s early and unequivocal advice
This Government vacillated between herd immunity and the World Health Organisation’s early and unequivocal advice of good old-fashioned shoe-leather epidemiology. You’d have thought Johnson would have learnt from the phenomenal public health response of our very own, Tracy Daszkiewicz, who contained the Salisbury poisonings in 2018.
Even if Johnson hadn’t heard of our Tracy, then surely, he must have heard about SARS, MERS, Swine Flu and Ebola; or did he think to himself, “by Jove Gove, these viruses were just fake news and even if they were real, then not to worry old chap as they only tend to target the poor in far off countries?”
Herd immunity was, and still seems to be the discredited strategy, as of course, the old economy has to be put before public health. Even economists who haven’t won a Nobel prize will tell you that the two are interlinked, because if public health is disposable then you certainly won’t have a healthy economy.
We finally got some ‘serious’ epidemiology in the form of the taxpayer-funded £37bn Test, Track, and ‘sunk without a’ Trace, led by TalkTalk mastermind, Dame Dido Harding, who went straight into the job without an interview. Why would one possibly need to have experience of a public health response when you have a horse racing pedigree?
You may remember that Dame Harding once skilfully steered the TalkTalk helm into a vortex, while a cyber-attack revealed the personal details of up to four million customers. Harding was obviously an exceptionally competent, ‘married to a Tory peer’ person to oversee public health, until it was obvious that she should have been overseeing public houses instead, pulling pints.
So competent was she that it failed miserably with no accountability – “this government fails upwards and rewards incompetence,” as epidemiologist, Deepti Gurdasani recently said. Johnson’s gluttonous gravy train and his pursuit of the discredited herd immunity strategy continued ad infinitum with the help of the Great Barrington Declaration scientists, some of whom were funded by the Koch brothers.
The overture then quickly heralded…
…Cronyism – awarding PPE and ‘everything else’ contracts to their mates without competitive tender. VIP lanes, fast-tracking Tory donors and all other mates to provide failing pandemic equipment, including a pub landlord who knew Hancock. Only thing was – their mates didn’t give them mates’ rates, as this was surely the perfect time to make as much capital as one possibly could, especially while the little people on zero-hour contracts and low pay were distracted by trying to make ends meet by using foodbanks.
Then came the billionaire Tory press attacks on our state school teachers, just because they wanted to ensure safety. NHS, carers and other key workers who are not UK citizens, were still being charged for using the health service, months after Johnson’s prime pledge to scrap these fees as soon as possible. Our Health and social care workers were being sent into the eye of the storm without PPE – as ten years of cuts and a focus on Brexit, took precedence over protecting our NHS and care workers despite previous pandemic ‘exercises’ like Cygnus and Alice.
I could go on ad nauseam. Enough of the overture; moving on to the next movement… a recap of the Great British pandemic revolt:
The lack of bog rolls nearly sent the earth on a collision course to oblivion. Then came the privileged revolts against masks, lockdowns and vaccines… poorer nations were crying out for such luxuries and still, they are crying out for a shot in the arm.
Who can forget the successful revolt against the European Super League, even though the brown beer still managed to flow and fuel fans’ outrage until they prevailed, deservedly so; it continued to flow as they celebrated their victory over corporate greed.
Marcus Rashford was briefly de facto PM
Thankfully, there were a few shining lights amidst the Tory malfeasance in the form of a young gentleman called, Mr Rashford who became the de facto Prime Minister for all too brief a moment. When this government failed yet again, it was Marcus who made sure children from low income families had something to eat in one of the richest countries in the world.
Other shining lights followed in the form of peaceful protest groups – Black Lives Matter, Disabled People Against Cuts (DPAC), Independent Sage, Reclaim the Streets and We Own It. The promise of what could be achieved through revolt via peaceful protest culminated with our gentlemen footballers taking the knee while Priti Patel incited hatred to the chorus of Johnson refusing to call out those who booed them for fear of retribution from his bosses – The Torygraph and The Daily Hate’s, Lord Rothermere – he of the non-domicile tax status, as taxes for the rich are so very last season.
Working throughout the football furore, bog roll rampages and vacuous vaccine conspiracy theories, were our great unsung frontline key workers; putting their lives at risk to serve those of us who were fortunate enough to have sat debating it all from the comfort of our homes. It shouldn’t have taken a pandemic for the nation to value our frontline key workers with a few weekly claps, but better late than never, eh?!
While privileged mini revolts about masks and vaccines continue, it is the legacy of Bevan’s beating heart that has never flatlined since he and modest Attlee established our most beloved of institutions – the NHS.
Key workers ‘not that great after all’
Our phenomenal NHS and care staff are the people who have guided us through this ‘outsourced’ pandemic and successfully rolled out the vaccine. This Government agreed they were phenomenal too, but when it came to a pay rise, well, they concluded that they weren’t that great after all – Johnson et al. clapped with one hand and slapped them in the face with the other. Heck, a couple of the NHS nurses and doctors even saved his life while too many others lost theirs, but even that didn’t stop him from denying them a meaningful pay rise.
So where is the national outrage for the despicable treatment of our NHS staff, key and gig workers? Zero-hour contracts, over 10 years of cruel austerity – any takers for some outrage? Above all else – where is the national outrage that so many of our citizens, including many key workers, have unnecessarily died in one of the richest countries in the world – more than 150,000 according to the ONS.
Hopefully, an impartial judge-led public inquiry (with meaningful consequences) will deliver justice to all who have lost loved ones, but it will take a nation united to demand an end to inequality, austerity and food banks – interesting fact, there are now more food banks in the UK than McDonald’s fast food joints.
Profits over people and 40 years of Thatcher’s neoliberalism
As the United Nations begins to gather information ahead of another investigation into the UK government over its adherence to the human rights of chronically ill and disabled people – only 3 years since its 2018 report concluded that this government had inflicted great suffering on our disabled and poor citizens – we need a peaceful and united protest movement to demand better from this plutocratic government who make Thatcher look like the angel of mercy.
Profits over people and over 40 years of Thatcher’s neoliberal TINA legacy are killing our beautiful planet. Maybe when the beer stops flowing, the balls stop being kicked and the billions of intelligent non-human animals stop being slaughtered for little sausages, our great nation just might summon some united outrage and demand better.
We can’t return to normal because normal was precisely the problem in the first place, as was graffitied in Hong Kong back in 2020.
