Covid mutates, division exacerbates
By: Jeevan Farthing
Tags: Lockdown, Coronavirus, Conservatives

This new strain of coronavirus brings with it the fear and uncertainty we all felt in March, but this time it feels different. There’s an underlying sense of resentment too. Bitterness, despair and division, accumulating for months but particularly apparent now. When we first locked down solidarity prevailed, as did a shared appreciation for the key workers that have always kept the UK ticking over. Yet jealousy now seems particularly widespread, perhaps inevitable with a tiered system that grants greater freedom to areas without Andy Burnham’s presence, seemingly not based on science at all. New Zealand are the envy of the world, covid-free with excellent leadership, whilst we’re left to resent the failings of our incompetent government, that seek to divide rather than unite. The country is functionally depressed.

It’d be laughable if the outcomes weren’t quite so bleak. We’re all in this together, from the party of austerity, that systematically demonised the working-class, migrants and disabled people among others. Any notion of unity duly crumbled after Dominic Cummings, the orchestrator of lockdown restrictions, broke them. Good governance requires trust; this evaporated after his press conference in the rose garden showed utter contempt for those that sacrificed attending funerals because we cared about other people’s lives. Initially we were united in anger, but this slowly crumbled as individuals felt the restrictions were meaningless, because they didn’t apply to all.

Shortly afterwards teachers became the scapegoat. The same teachers that were forced to undertake their work in a completely alien environment, determine GCSE and A-level grades and become a safety net, delivering food parcels to children that our fractured welfare state cannot sustain. Their reasonable requests, to be able to work safely, were met with hostility from a government too ideologically obsessed with the private sector to run the effective test and trace system that would’ve mitigated all of this. But no, it’s the selfish teachers holding back the potential of children. Their mistreatment continued as Gavin Williamson forced them to bear the brunt of his exams fiasco, Rishi Sunak denied them their pay rise, and now the government is forcing them to organise mass testing facilities at the eleventh hour. A heavily unionised profession, perhaps it was inevitable the Tories would take political advantage of this pandemic to attack teachers, pitting them against the interests of the students who they’ve supported.

These teachers were also embroiled in the debate surrounding the public sector pay freeze. Few commentators mentioned the detrimental effect it has on the economy, reducing workers’ spending power on the high street, but the discussion became intoxicated with this conflict between public sector workers and private sector workers. Of course, the victims of this irresponsible real terms pay cut were demonised as greedy. Apparently they wanted more than their fair share of the country’s resources. Division prevailed.

Not pursuing a zero-covid strategy meant continued measures to mitigate the spread of coronavirus were inevitable, further dividing the public as individuals argue their approach is more effective. Those that support lockdowns don’t care about the mental health epidemic, those that want schools to close don’t care about children’s educational prospects and those that support herd immunity don’t care about people dying from covid. I personally find the latter irresponsible, but none of this division would be necessary if our Prime Minister could make decisions without guaranteed dither and delay. We could’ve been New Zealand.

We could’ve upheld democratic accountability. Instead, billions of pounds of public money has been recklessly siphoned off to government contractors that don’t deliver, that seldom have any experience in supplying the relevant equipment. Their anti-corruption champion is a Tory MP, the head of Serco Test & Trace is the same Tory Baroness Harding that presided over a data breach at TalkTalk. Randox was just one company awarded a contract without due diligence. £133 million for voided, unsafe tests. It’s sickening that individuals are able to profit from a pandemic that has plunged millions into destitution, yet the culture of cronyism is scarcely reported outside occasional twitter threads. Once the full-scale of corruption is known, the division between government chums and the general population will only exacerbate.

Perhaps the clearest division has been geographical. Londoners are outraged that their Christmas has been cancelled at the last-minute, but they’re not allowed to because the North has had it tougher throughout. It’s the homogeneous North against the homogeneous South. No nuance, just the two battling over who is legally permitted to give their Nan coronavirus. Londoners just as alien to Waitrose as those living in Sunderland are forgotten, whilst the housing poverty they face is somehow acceptable because infrastructure and opportunities are reasonable. In the North, Liverpool were offered mass testing but not Hull when its coronavirus cases soared. Hull was denied its regular train service to London because it’s only served by an open access operator, but not Stoke. Stoke isn’t allowed to be anti-racist because it’s cheaply portayed as an emblem of social conservatism. Brighton is just the liberal elite.

I could go on. The country is fractured. Only yesterday, Twitter users bickered over who precisely was to blame for the overcrowded trains leaving London St Pancras after the announcement of tier 4. This lockdown does feel different. I feel more despair. Sometimes I too find myself embroiled in the blame game. Try to remember that the malevolent forces in government have manufactured this division. Crucially, try to remember this unnecessary feeling of despair in 2024.