We need Churchill’s spirit in this sad time
IT SIMPLY defies both belief and description. The coronavirus scare is like nothing anyone currently living on this planet has ever encountered – and we all need to get used to a world that will change for ever. At the time of writing, both the number of those infected and, tragically, the tally of those who do not survive continue to rise sharply.
Hardly surprising, when you recall the words of the Government’s chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance who said last week that holding the number of deaths down to around 20,000 would be “horrible” but also a “good outcome”. The true scale of the appalling crisis we are now confronting has become plain.
To give that shocking figure some sort of context, the average number of flu deaths over the past five winter seasons in this country is around 17,000, says Public Health England.
Governments around the globe promise and pump untold billions (in time, that will have to be more like trillions) into their economies. And life effectively comes to a standstill for most of Europe as it closes its borders and seeks to quarantine an entire continent. So it’s not unreasonable to ask just what on earth we can or should be doing.
Except for queuing to buy more toilet rolls than you can carry and enough dried pasta to feed half of Rome.
The answer is to look back to a time when this nation faced a wholly different but also deadly enemy in the Second World War, and developed what has subsequently become known as the Blitz Spirit.
There are clear parallels; around 32,000 people were killed during the Blitz and though the drone of planes heralded the oncoming carnage, where the bombs fell was as arbirary as the virus.
BACK IN those simpler days slogans such as “Keep Calm and Carry On” – or as Winston Churchill more colourfully put it “Keep Buggering On!” – caught the mood of a nation faced with the toxic combination of fear and uncertainty, and the same is true today. Although it is worth noting that even during the Blitz the pubs and theatres stayed open and schools weren’t closed though many children were evacuated.
While there can never be any positives from a situation as grave as this, there is a possibility that the splits in society caused by the seemingly endless rows over Brexit could, in part, be cured by a spirit of coming together.
This can of course only be achieved if some of the appalling acts of selfishness such as ludicrous stockpiling end and we start to look out for each other. Many of
■ you will, like me, have already shopped for a neighbour to help them out.
That’s what we can do – but what of the Government?
Chancellor Rishi Sunak earned plaudits for his speech last week when he announced a financial lifeline that, when coupled with measures introduced in his maiden Budget just 11 days ago (and doesn’t that seem like a lifetime away?) make £350billion available on a grant and loan guarantee scheme.
It was an unimaginable amount of cash, but regrettably it was never going to be anywhere near enough. On Friday he
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HOW to deter stockpiling: in Denmark, some stores have introduced draconian measures to prevent people from “hamstering” – the in-vogue expression for panic buying.with a product such as hand gel, you can have one bottle for the equivalent of £3, but two will cost you £150! Those Danes are sometimes so sane, aren’t they? reappeared alongside the PM with a blank cheque to save jobs and protect livelihoods with a pledge to cover 80 per cent of laidoff workers’ salaries up to £2,500-a-month.
He announced that VAT bills would be deferred and welfare payments would be increased by £7billion in an everexpanding package to see us through.
Remember, 12 years back a different government found £500billion to bail out our banks.the current one needs to spend everything it takes to get us through this crisis or it will be accused of valuing the lives and wellbeing of the population at less than the survival of the banks.
It is also relatively easy to find where some of the money can come from. How can we possibly persist in spending around £13billion on the foreign aid budget for instance?
The very people who fund that through their taxes are some of those most at risk, yet our cash continues to flow to some very odd projects abroad.
The path forward then is clear. To quote Churchill again: “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
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THAT unique ability to capture the mood of the nation with the right sentiment at the right time was evident again last week when the Queen reminded us “our nation’s history has been forged by people and communities coming together to work as one, concentrating our combined efforts with a focus on the common goal”.
Meanwhile, in a seemingly rival missive from the House of Sussex, Harry and Meghan blathered on about “posting accurate information” during times that “feel quite scary”.
Can someone tell them that their condescending views on how we might fare while they are holed up in their grandiose foreign hideaway ring a little hollow?