Nothing has changed

In this weird semi-lockdown we are in, things for some people are the same as they ever were. Many people are still going to work, as per almost normal. We can still go shopping. We can go out whenever we like to take some exercise. Some of us are being paid 80% of our salaries by the government to sit around doing nothing. In my case, I barely know what day it is, especially during the week. It isn’t always going to be like this.

Via a compliant media, we are being softened up for a gradually lifting of our semi-lockdown. In recent days, the softening up has been ramped up particularly by government friendly newspapers, like the Mail, Express and, especially and inevitably the Sun.

The Sun’s agenda is based purely on the economy. It feigns empathy with and sympathy for those have lost loved ones, yet its pages are stacked with subtle qualifications and caveats. This Sun leader exposes the reality of what it is saying. Read the actual words because what they argue for is unmistakable. They call the suggested date for a mass return to work on Tuesday 26 May as being not just ‘back to work day’, but ‘freedom day’, which sounds eerily reminiscent of the Trumpian rhetoric, or something that Nigel Farage might say, that has encouraged deranged people with rifles to occupy government buildings.

From the Sun’s leader page from Friday 1 May: ‘Too many assume that the State can afford to pay them to stay home until the coast is completely clear — and that restarting the economy is about doing corporations a favour at the expense of workers’ safety. Both are nonsense.’ Hang on a minute: is that true? I have not met, come across or read anything from anyone who thinks the state – it’s always ‘the state’ in the Sun, a newspaper that doesn’t believe in the state doing anything – can pay people to stay at home ‘until the coast is completely clear’, but that’s not what they really mean. They are flying Boris Johnson’s kite. They are putting down a marker that furloughing is going to end, soon. That way, figure Johnson’s spin doctors, led by Dominic Cummings, the end of furlough will not come as a shock.

If you think the Sun’s comments were pure coincidence, then think again. Also on Friday, Boris Johnson met with the Sun to give them an exclusive interview, which appears in today’s edition. It is inescapably a fact that Johnson is hugely popular with Sun readers. Indeed, his popularity ratings remain high across the land. it might appear that the government is handing out mixed messages, but it isn’t. This how the red tops work. It is how this government works.

Many of us feel relatively comfortable at the moment. Indeed some are better off, even with the furloughing, because their household expenditure has plunged. Put simply, people still have money. This is about to change. The storm clouds are gathering.

Huge pressure is building on chancellor Rishi Sunak to announce a second wave of financial support to business and individuals beyond June in order to avert spiralling unemployment and a raft of disastrous company bankruptcies. Already, including where I live, large companies are announcing large job losses. Rolls Royce has announced it will be cutting 8000 jobs from a worldwide total of 52000, which is about a sixth of the overall workforce. We do not know where specifically the cuts will fall but it is hard to believe some will not be local to us. Airlines will not be ordering new planes and engines for years to come.

It will be the same at many companies across the land. And people are right to be worried. Jobs like those at Rolls Royce, and indeed nearby Airbus, whose employees have also been furloughed, are good jobs and when and if they are gone, it is certain, in the short term at least, they will not be replaced by good jobs. If government support ends at the end of June, as the country plummets into a deep economic recession, perhaps even a depression, life will be very different.

I keep reading that Boris Johnson is a ‘changed man’ with his near death experience at the hands of Covid-19. If that means he will transform into a serious and substantial person who tells the truth, it can only be a good thing. However, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Everything in politics is now being geared to ‘freedom day’ and ‘back to work day’. Perhaps it will work and that life will get back to some kind of normal, the wheels of industry will start turning and an economic disaster can be averted. But at what cost to human life? And what if it cannot be averted?

The ‘changed man’ in Downing Street is going to have abandon the bullshit and bonhomie in order to save the country, especially its people. Judging from his close allies in the right wing gutter press, it seems nothing has changed. And I don’t think it will, either.