TIMES.KY

Cayman Islands, Caribbeanand International News
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

No matter how this coronavirus crisis ends, it will be bad for conservatism

No matter how this coronavirus crisis ends, it will be bad for conservatism

The NHS was a socialist ideal – and now its role has brought about a paradigm shift in the political debate
The government, facing pressing and serious questions about its competence in every phase of the coronavirus crisis, concentrates its focus on that immediate challenge: this isn’t the right time to launch an inquiry, ministers say, this is the time to come together. In bizarre, sixth-form language, they pour scorn on media scrutiny. Probably in some corner of a bygone world, that strategy still works. Yet questions over their capability are not the only challenge they face. More seriously, the virus threatens to upend the conservative worldview.

We know that seismic, destructive events change assumptions, because we have the NHS as proof of it. Out of the second world war came the umbrella principle: if money was no object when it came to killing people, it should be no object when it comes to keeping them alive. From this sprang the greatest public housing project ever undertaken in this country, the extension of universal free education and, most importantly, the moral imperative that medicine should be free at the point of need.

All these projects were undertaken at a time of epic national debt and genuine fiscal insecurity. The message was not so much “money is no object” as “money has no meaning”. Perhaps the NHS has emerged as the most important because it was the one that lasted, or perhaps it lasted because it was the most important. Either way, a principle was established: socialism in health, if nowhere else.

Successive governments have made operational incursions into this territory, introducing markets and piecemeal privatisation in the last century, penny-pinching and more privatisation in this one; but it is politically unthinkable, to question the idea that treatment should be blind to wealth. It’s not a practical point, that things are cheaper when you pool resources, and that people are more secure when they pool their risk; it is a moral commitment to health as a citizen’s right. The notion of British exceptionalism is 99% cant, but the NHS genuinely is exceptional – and it has become part of the national story, with a huge amount hanging off it.

This has led to some mightily weird tensions and contradictions in the public discourse. The overall direction of travel was towards ever greater marketisation, and yet this vast terrain of life-and-limb stayed, in principle at least, money-blind. Over the austerity years, when a life was still infinitely valuable in A&E yet infinitely disposable during a benefit sanction, those conflicts played, if anything, better for the right. All the noble precepts around the NHS were so incongruous that they passed into the category of emotionality, whereupon they could be attached to anything, however irrelevant: have £350m for your NHS (if you leave the EU); get more great NHS access (if you get rid of immigrants). On the progressive side we saw healthcare as the sanctuary of all our pro-social impulses; but on the other side it was the repository for all contradiction and sentimentally, so that Nigel Farage could build rhetoric from it as effectively as Caroline Lucas could.

Now, something much more interesting has happened: health, and its socialist symbolism, has become the overriding priority, the most important determinant of policy. All kinds of organising principles and assumptions thus collapse or simply evaporate: profit is less important than life; productivity is less important than protecting people. Small, tight Thatcherite units of familial care have expanded to encompass neighbours, acquaintances, unknown nurses hundreds of miles way, whose altruism begets gratitude and empathy.

We are forced to reevaluate the low-paid, who previously were portrayed as alternately vulnerable and parasitic, agents of their own misfortune, but with little agency anywhere else. We have the incalculable blessing of immigration paraded daily before our eyes. To get into that classic debate now – “Are they net recipients or net contributors?” – would be unimaginable. These paradigm shifts are already having huge impacts on political debate. If the undervalued have become suddenly precious, what will this crisis mean for those we previously valorised, such as the entrepreneurs?

The concept of wealth creation has already, I suspect, become completely void: turns out you can’t create it on your own; you need workers, and you need customers. The previously comfortable – discovering what it is to be insecure, to be reliant on the state, to be one paycheque from oblivion – will already have reworked their attitudes to social security. All the intellectual scaffolding of free-market fundamentalism, the ideas that held it up and maintained its sense of its own fairness, centred on the idea that money was its own virtue, that respectable and decent people found a way to get it, that those without it were derelict and feckless. It was never possible to dismantle this piece by piece, with graphs, with case studies, but exploding the whole thing happened pretty fast.

As we approach the fifth week of lockdown, there’s been a spurt of competitive pessimism, commentators vying to see who can predict the direst outcome: no, the corona era will not be good for the planet; it will usher in a new populism, a second wave of austerity more deadly than the first, a new authoritarianism; the world can only get worse. Yet what we see unfolding is quite different: hospitals, the one place where money didn’t talk, have become our cathedrals, and the shockwaves are immense. If I were a Conservative government, I’d be looking for a rebuttal to that – but I wouldn’t rate my chances.
Newsletter

Related Articles

TIMES.KY
0:00
0:00
Close
Paper straws found to contain long-lasting and potentially toxic chemicals - study
FTX's Bankman-Fried headed for jail after judge revokes bail
Blackrock gets half a trillion dollar deal to rebuild Ukraine
Israel: Unprecedented Civil Disobedience Looms as IDF Reservists Protest Judiciary Reform
America's First New Nuclear Reactor in Nearly Seven Years Begins Operations
Southeast Asia moves closer to economic unity with new regional payments system
Today Hunter Biden’s best friend and business associate, Devon Archer, testified that Joe Biden met in Georgetown with Russian Moscow Mayor's Wife Yelena Baturina who later paid Hunter Biden $3.5 million in so called “consulting fees”
Singapore Carries Out First Execution of a Woman in Two Decades Amid Capital Punishment Debate
Google testing journalism AI. We are doing it already 2 years, and without Google biased propoganda and manipulated censorship
Unlike illegal imigrants coming by boats - US Citizens Will Need Visa To Travel To Europe in 2024
Musk announces Twitter name and logo change to X.com
The politician and the journalist lost control and started fighting on live broadcast.
The future of sports
Unveiling the Black Hole: The Mysterious Fate of EU's Aid to Ukraine
Farewell to a Music Titan: Tony Bennett, Renowned Jazz and Pop Vocalist, Passes Away at 96
Alarming Behavior Among Florida's Sharks Raises Concerns Over Possible Cocaine Exposure
Transgender Exclusion in Miss Italy Stirs Controversy Amidst Changing Global Beauty Pageant Landscape
Joe Biden admitted, in his own words, that he delivered what he promised in exchange for the $10 million bribe he received from the Ukraine Oil Company.
TikTok Takes On Spotify And Apple, Launches Own Music Service
Global Trend: Using Anti-Fake News Laws as Censorship Tools - A Deep Dive into Tunisia's Scenario
Arresting Putin During South African Visit Would Equate to War Declaration, Asserts President Ramaphosa
Hacktivist Collective Anonymous Launches 'Project Disclosure' to Unearth Information on UFOs and ETIs
Typo sends millions of US military emails to Russian ally Mali
Server Arrested For Theft After Refusing To Pay A Table's $100 Restaurant Bill When They Dined & Dashed
The Changing Face of Europe: How Mass Migration is Reshaping the Political Landscape
China Urges EU to Clarify Strategic Partnership Amid Trade Tensions
Europe is boiling: Extreme Weather Conditions Prevail Across the Continent
The Last Pour: Anchor Brewing, America's Pioneer Craft Brewer, Closes After 127 Years
Democracy not: EU's Digital Commissioner Considers Shutting Down Social Media Platforms Amid Social Unrest
Sarah Silverman and Renowned Authors Lodge Copyright Infringement Case Against OpenAI and Meta
Italian Court's Controversial Ruling on Sexual Harassment Ignites Uproar
Why Do Tech Executives Support Kennedy Jr.?
The New York Times Announces Closure of its Sports Section in Favor of The Athletic
BBC Anchor Huw Edwards Hospitalized Amid Child Sex Abuse Allegations, Family Confirms
Florida Attorney General requests Meta CEO's testimony on company's platforms' alleged facilitation of illicit activities
The Distorted Mirror of actual approval ratings: Examining the True Threat to Democracy Beyond the Persona of Putin
40,000 child slaves in Congo are forced to work in cobalt mines so we can drive electric cars.
BBC Personalities Rebuke Accusations Amidst Scandal Involving Teen Exploitation
A Swift Disappointment: Why Is Taylor Swift Bypassing Canada on Her Global Tour?
Historic Moment: Edgars Rinkevics, EU's First Openly Gay Head of State, Takes Office as Latvia's President
Bye bye democracy, human rights, freedom: French Cops Can Now Secretly Activate Phone Cameras, Microphones And GPS To Spy On Citizens
The Poor Man With Money, Mark Zuckerberg, Unveils Twitter Replica with Heavy-Handed Censorship: A New Low in Innovation?
Unilever Plummets in a $2.5 Billion Free Fall, to begin with: A Reckoning for Misuse of Corporate Power Against National Interest
Beyond the Blame Game: The Need for Nuanced Perspectives on America's Complex Reality
Twitter Targets Meta: A Tangle of Trade Secrets and Copycat Culture
The Double-Edged Sword of AI: AI is linked to layoffs in industry that created it
US Sanctions on China's Chip Industry Backfire, Prompting Self-Inflicted Blowback
Meta Copy Twitter with New App, Threads
The New French Revolution
BlackRock Bitcoin ETF Application Refiled, Naming Coinbase as ‘Surveillance-Sharing’ Partner
×