The clock is running down and activists are in a panic.
With only weeks to go before life returns – more or less – to normal next month, there seems to be a renewed effort by some to make noisy demands for the lockdown to end “NOW!!!”.
I can’t understand it. We have come this far. The ‘roadmap’ out of the pandemic that everyone clamoured for has been followed and everything is going well, and for once, better than expected. In the past, the governments decisions to open things up – schools, pubs last summer, Christmas festivities, and so on – has been met with hysteria and complaints and – with the wisdom of hindsight – blamed for a new wave of infections or allowing new variants to get a foothold. Is it any wonder they are acting with more caution now?
The only explanation I can think of is that a whole political movement centered primarily around the Daily Mail and ‘talk radio‘ stations has emerged and is desperate to milk the final few weeks of relevance before fading away. Similarly, its opposite number, centred around Labour’s central office, The Guardian, and some of the Unions, which trades on an equally hysterical demand for the government to be “held to account” for “dithering” and even “prosecuted” for “150,000 murders”, will try to, as the saying goes, milk it while it still has some moo left.
This last group is on a slightly better footing because of course the calls for enquiries and insisting that the government is responsible for every Covid death will maintain its political capital value for some time. The other side of course will fixate on those who were lost to suicide or cancelled operations, and the “ruined economy”.
Eventually these two sides will merge into one of general grievance and complaining, and as the Pandemoaners turn, inevitably, to street politics, the pandemonium may in fact outlast the pandemic.
Only hindsight will tell.
