This was a pivotal week in British and American politics.
Over here in the House of Commons, England voted for lockdown where the numbers were questioned and the result isn’t clear yet.
Over there in the Presidential Election, Americans voted for Biden, but the numbers were challenged and the result isn’t clear either.
“Fake” News
If Donald Trump could be said to have done anything for the United States, it’s to drag American politics into the 21st century.
He’s famous for using his Twitter account to get his point of view out to the public.
He’s well-known for his criticism of the media, especially digital media, under the banner of “fake news”.
He’s not so well-known though for introducing prison reform via the First Step Act; extending the US military-industrial complex into space via the Space Force; tax reform via the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act and judicial reform by appointing three supreme court and more than 200 other federal judges during his term in office.
But he’s not at all well-known for conceding the 2020 presidential election, instead making accusations of illegal ballots, denial of access to observe the count, eventually claiming that the election was stolen. As the AP (Associated Press) fact check showed, that was a load of … well, dare one whisper it … fake news.
Debatable Lockdown
In the UK, Monday saw Prime Minister Boris Johnson giving the house a Covid-19 briefing then answering questions. What Hansard didn’t show was the ‘short statement’ made by the Speaker beforehand.
Referring to the way in which the Prime Minister’s announcement on Saturday had been forced by leaks to the media, the Speaker said that he’d been reassured by Johnson that the “the leaks were NOT from Downing Street” before he went on to talk about “unacceptable and discourteous behaviour”, which of course had nothing to do with the Prime Minister whatsoever.
In the ensuing three-hour debate on Wednesday, some 25 Tory MPs spoke of their misgivings or outright opposition to the new regulations for ‘Lockdown 2’.
On her way to an unrecorded vote, borough MP Theresa May observed that “the prediction was wrong before it was even used. This leads to a problem for the Government, because for many people it looks as though the figures are being chosen to support the policy, rather than the policy being based on the figures”.
And while sympathetic with the dilemma the government faced, Mrs May went on to talk about the costs: of non-Covid deaths; of domestic abuse; of mental health issues; as well as the economy.
She spoke out clearly about public worship, saying “My concern is that the Government today making it illegal to conduct an act of public worship, for the best of intentions, sets a precedent that could be misused by a Government in future with the worst of intentions”.
A telling point was then made by Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP) speaking immediately after Mrs May, when he observed that, “We in the SNP are not unused to the Prime Minister scuttling out before our spokesperson gets to their feet, but the fact that he could not wait four minutes to listen to his predecessor was, I think, extremely unfortunate”.
The words “extremely unfortunate” deserve explanation, but this is a family newspaper.
Meanwhile, on his way to voting for the new law, Borough MP Matt Rodda observed that “it would have been so much better had the Government acted sooner”.
And while the actual vote was vastly in favour, 516 to 38 (of which 32 were Conservatives), if this were a conventional partisan vote, calculations show that the outcome could well have gone the other way (318 to 324).
Lockdown is not the only answer.
Gruel Britannia
Marcus Rashford.
Just about says it all.
The government might just as well have been saying “let them eat cake”.
Because the U-turn over child food poverty should be taken as a salutary reminder that tuning-in to public feelings might be in the interest of all elected representatives (local as well as national).
In Memoriam
Thursday, November 11, 1920 saw the burial of the Unknown Soldier in Westminster Abbey among the monarchs, the great and the good of British history.
It marked a turning point in the formation of modern Britain – a transition from grief about the war dead (over 758,736 young men and 655 women killed in action in World War One) as the country was turning towards remembrance and respect.
A century later we pay tribute to the many, then and since, who gave all their tomorrows – giving us all our todays.
