Life In Lockdown - Impotent Fury

I promise not to make too much of a habit of this - no one wants to come to a place of distraction for extended bouts of vitriol - but sometimes, in extraordinary circumstances when anger rises to a level when it’s hard to find an outlet for it, you need to put pen to paper[1]. I think the title of this blog probably sums up what a number of people in the UK are feeling at the moment - a sense of fury and injustice at people who are ostensibly intended to act in our best interests and yet repeatedly highlight their own contempt and disinterest for those they believe are beneath them and yet, paradoxically, are the very people they need to keep them in their positions of power.

Let’s take a look at the elements in play at the moment, shall we?

- Government advice, in part authored by Boris Johnson and his chief aide (AKA Keith Harris to his Orville) Dominic Cummings, which specified that those with coronavirus symptoms should, under no circumstances, leave the house.[2]
- Instances of government officials/advisers breaking these guidelines and resigning as a result of it. [3] [4]
- A story about Boris Johnson’s chief aide breaking lockdown restrictions while suffering from coronavirus symptoms. [5]
- A round of very similarly worded tweets of support from Tory Mps (almost as if they working off a draft by a top aide to the PM, for example) [6] [7] [8] [9]
- A follow up story about a second breaking of lockdown, making the previous day’s support tweets look pretty untenable. [10] [11]
- A Daily Briefing featuring the Prime Minister (his third appearance since 12th April) in order to gaslight the country. [12]

Let’s summarise what’s underlying a lot of this:-

Arrogance
It’s long been clear that the abiding sense of entitlement held by our largely Eton-educated Prime Ministers has given them a sense of being better than the rest of the population and that they are not to be held accountable to the same standards. This has escalated to a new degree with Johnson, a man who is all entitlement and got to his current position by repeatedly lying. (Small side note - it is remarkable that I can call our current Prime Minister a liar and it not be grounds for libel given that, amongst many other examples, he has been sacked for lying and I can back it up with links that say as much. [13] [14])

The sad thing is that history has shown him repeatedly that he can lie with impunity and not suffer the consequences as he turns up the “posh buffon” act, throws in a few learned quotes from his misspent education (by his own admission, he “didn’t do enough work” at university [15]) and, by and large, gets what he wants.

Contempt
There’s a clear contempt for the British public as a whole here. His statement today that Dominic Cummings acted “responsibly’ and with “integrity” in breaking the guidelines [16] shows that he believes that it is his divine right to brazenly lie and expect to get away with it. It’s a contempt for anyone other than himself that he shares in common with Cummings who famously suggested that we let the old die [17], something that has happened anyway with their neglectful policy around care homes (and, given Cummings’ quote, it would be unsurprising if this turned out to be a deliberate move.

Boredom With The Whole Thing
What is also clear is that they are bored with the whole process. Johnson only deigns to appear in a daily briefing when he absolutely has to (as I said earlier, this is only his third appearance in the last six weeks) and does his best to not answer questions (see link 12 again) while sticking to the same script repeatedly in a attempt to avoid any sort of real scrutiny.

All this leads to a feeling of fury in a government with a “do as I tell you, don’t do as I do” bolstered by a sense that there is no accountability for their actions. Cummings has done more than other advisers have resigned over but, due to our blundering after dinner speaker turned Prime Minister’s utter reliance on Cummings to stop him from completely devolving into a Trumpian-style gibbering simpleton, he skirts through unscathed, scandal skimming off him like the Teflon-coated Mekon that he is. Whether this remains the case is hard to see but, for the moment, we are left with rage and, with lockdown still in place (undermined and untenable as it feels at the moment) nowhere suitable to direct it. 




[1] Yes, I appreciate that’s a pretty archaic image but “put fingers to keyboard” is nowhere as pleasing.
[2] Article 
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[6] Tweet 
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[17] Article