I begin with a quote from Lloyd Evans’ sketch about PMQs in the Spectator magazine:
Ranil Jayawardena quoted a finding by the Royal College of Obstetricians that 75 per cent of infant deaths are avoidable. This means that every year hundreds of tiny white coffins are lowered into the ground because of bad equipment or lousy training. That’s a third world statistic. But MPs paid no attention because they were discussing which irrelevance was more irrelevant than all the other irrelevances.
The irrelevance which was more irrelevant than all the other irrelevances was some aspect or other about Brexit, the unfolding crisis that is engulfing political debate at the expense, and to the detriment, of all else. One of the biggest tragedies of Brexit – and there are many – is the simple fact that hundreds of infants are dying unnecessarily whilst politicians are looking the other way.
No one is saying that Liam Fox, Boris Johnson, David Davis, Nigel Farage and all the other hard Brexiters had this tragic situation in mind when they campaigned for our country to raise the drawbridge to the rest of Europe. They were and are entitled to campaign for nationalism, and English nationalism to be specific, but the one thing I do blame them for was promising the country how easy it would all be.
Remember ‘Dr’ Liam Fox telling us how getting a new deal with Europe would be the ‘easiest in human history’? In 2016, David Davis promised that we would new trade agreements in place ‘within between 12 and 24 months’. Boris Johnson, the biggest liar of them all in an admittedly crowded field, told us that our sausages were under threat from the EU, who were also trying to ensure bananas conformed to a specific shape and of course he lied about the extra £350 million a week for the NHS. Lies, lies and more lies. The lies of the hard Brexit right are part of the reason the country is in a complete mess not least because they have had to be countered with cold facts.
This is not a party political attack on anyone. They’re all to blame. it has become increasingly clear that the leaders of the main parties are both hopelessly out of their depth and barely able to deal with one issue, never mind the wide variety of issues sitting in their untouched in-boxes. And even when a subject like dying infants is raised in parliament, no one is listening and the newspapers barely bother to report it.
I have no reason to disbelieve Mr Jayawardena’s statistics of children dying because of “bad equipment or lousy training”. Indeed, to the best of my knowledge, they are not being queried. In which case, MPs must ‘pay attention’ and ensure that not a single infant dies in future from ‘bad equipment or lousy training’. The public will not politely ask you to stop this scandal: once they get to hear about it, they will tell you.
