Now is the time to keep calm

What goes around, comes around, so they say. And it does not take an international-class satirist (which I freely admit I am not) to frown thoughtfully, suck the carefullycapped denture and start a querying sentence with: “Er, excuse me, but…”, then point out that there are some very interesting parallels to be drawn across our public life at the moment.

Brexit has got done (allegedly); long live the coronavirus. Food shortages? Restricted travel? Closed borders? That will sort out the sheep from the goats. If they have an export licence.

This now officially-designated pandemic is finding its hosts all over the world wanting, to say the least, although governments of all cuts and colours are generally doing their best to contain, delay and generally kettle the horrible thing, and more power to them, I say.

We all have to take a bit of personal responsibility, too, even if it does mean having to put up with the prime minister telling us how to wash our hands to the tune of Happy Birthday.

The Dorries/Boris possibility of crossinfection at Westminster might still be tenuous (although even the Queen, that monument to stoicism, has taken to wearing gloves indoors). But let’s face it, you wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy, let alone the people who are supposed to be your new best friends.

If there was ever a proper application of that over-used and abused cliché: “Keep calm and carry on”, this is surely it.

Of course, it’s a very serious situation and deserves to be taken extremely seriously at all levels. Here in Britain, however, the natural home of the above

“Let’s face it, you wouldn’t wish this on your worst enemy

much-maligned phrase, it has also brought out the worst in many sections of the population who are not covering themselves in personal glory in their response to what is actually a proper emergency.

Now, I know we are not the only ones making exhibitions of ourselves – there have been YouTube videos of square goes in Sydney supermarkets, for goodness’ sake. But it surely cannot be just cynical old me who finds it grimly apt that the Churchillian Blitz spirit (“We’ve been through worse, we can do it again!”) that many claim is going to see Britain emerge from our EU-inflicted chains into the sunlit uplands of reclaimed sovereignty and “taking back control”, is now finding itself undermined by people panicbuying Cuticura’s best and fighting over loo roll?

To continue the wartime analogy via Dad’s Army, it’s not so much doughty old Corporal Jones yelling “Don’t panic! Don’t panic!” and “They don’t like it up ‘em!”, as spivvy, shifty Private Walker flogging knock-offs on the black market. In the spirit of Donald Trump’s initial, ill-advised witterings of “Crisis, what crisis?” and claiming that the whole thing is a conspiracy against him personally (how long ago that seems), I am perfectly certain that some deluded twits will think that the Italian shut-down is a cunning ruse to avoid exporting their precious pasta to other needy nations like ourselves.

And speaking of the royal family, how about all this hoo-hah about the last days of Harry and Meghan? At least, even with the recent highly-publicised trip back to Blighty and the naive sixth-in-line to the throne being phonepranked by a fake Greta Thunberg, the increasingly hard Megxit seems to be getting done somewhat more speedily than the stupendous national event after which it has been partially, and clumsily, named.

Wry and Dry Helen Brown