Come on kids, let's get back to normal! (But listen: if gran dies, it's your fault)
If there’s one thing this government has consistently proven itself to be good at, it’s coming up with a catchy slogan which is then impossible to de-escalate. We saw it first with “stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives”, which I think kind of worked actually – if there’s one thing the British people love, it’s a reminder that the NHS is so sacred that to invest public money in it in any significant way would be somehow unholy, so please stay indoors and clap and hope for the best. This lasted two months before it became, “stay alert, control the virus, save lives”.
Then there’s Rishi Sunak’s one-man high-street-restaurant renewal plan, which, when he first unveiled it, might as well have been written on a Post-it as “something like ‘eat out to help out’?
Not that obviously”, but has perversely stuck.
And – oh, what’s that? Matt Hancock’s
on Radio 1? What’s he saying? What new catchphrase does he have for us?
“Don’t kill your gran,” he told Newsbeat. Ah, OK. There’s more: “Don’t kill your gran by catching coronavirus and then passing it on. And you can pass it on before you’ve had any symptoms at all.” I have to admit that it’s ghoulishly catchy, though have to question the wisdom of going on a youth-focused news programme and more or less accusing them all of passively enacting senicide. “Hey, kids! What about that Ed Sheeran, hey? Anyway, listen: every thoughtless action of your life is now a mortal threat to your grandmother. TikTok!”
Personally, I think it’s a bit rich to lay responsibility for containing Covid on the shoulders of an age group that has only just recovered from the shock of having their university dreams torn away from them by an algorithm. But what do I know? It just feels odd that just after the government pushed so hard to open schools again, it is now blaming 17- to 22-year-olds – many of whom are, you know, in school still – for interacting with their mates.
I’m not saying young people are entirely innocent; there have been many documented instances of social distance-flouting raves and house parties being broken up by the police, and on a personal note, many of my days in lockdown have been ruined by an 18-yearold humiliating me online at Fifa. But if groups of people are so bad for the R value, then why has the government
made no eye-catching statement about the recent thousands-strong anti-mask protests? They’ve given firmer warnings to young people following the guidelines than the furious middleaged people actively not.
But then this is straight from the playbook, really: weaponising that early-lockdown feeling of neighbourly betrayal that simmered across the country for a number of weeks, a fever only broken by the VE Day conga. What the
Conservatives understand better than any party is that peculiarly English tendency to get quietly furious with anyone you perceive to be having an easier time than you.
It starts in cul-de-sacs, when Her Next Door gets a luxurious new car on finance, and it trickles down to the people on benefits who dare to own a TV. It reared its head, ugly and angular, when the early-lockdown rule that we could only leave the house once a day – and any breaking of that code could be reported to the police – set the curtains twitching. Only in a nation as deranged as England could people drive four hours to a beach and then tut to find other people there. The Tories know this and are using that energy to play people off against each other.
It’s interesting that these anti-young catchphrases have come in the wake of a weeks-long government push to get us “back to normal”, which has been gleefully embraced by furlough critics (“You’ve had the summer off, now back to work!”), office-work proponents (“Two hours commuting on a train each day is actually very precious You Time!”) and the aforementioned antimuzzle movement (I’ve put myself in a hypnotic trance more than once this week watching a talkRadio host inelegantly snip apart a mask).
But I fear it’s all poised to get worse when autumn turns greyer, and the nights draw closer, and the looming spectre of Lockdown Part II – don’t say it, don’t make eye contact with it, in case it notices us – heaves ever nearer. England had the highest excess deaths in Europe during the first wave, and that’s more to do with this and previous Conservative governments than it is to do with us. They are telling us to get back to normal – go to school, go to work, go to the pub and please please go to restaurants – but are already setting the groundwork to blame us when the next spike erupts. Don’t let Matt Hancock chiding Newsbeat listeners go unnoticed. He’ll be out for Radio 4 next.
• Joel Golby is the author of Brilliant, Brilliant, Brilliant Brilliant Brilliant