Why Boris Johnson must rethink Covid costs in ‘era of decadence’ – Bernard Ingham

Over the past 100 years or so we have had a succession of shocks to the system – World War One, the Great Depression, World War Two, the culmination of union abuse in the Winter of Discontent and the trials of recovery in the 1980s, another crash in 2008-09 from which we had not fully recovered when coronavirus hit us.

Claims that the Covid emergency will be over by Christmas carry about as much credibility as did forecasts of the duration of the First World War.

It is not all over bar the shouting by a long way, and about the only comfort is that, in spite of it all, life has progressively become more comfortable in the capitalist democracies over the past century.

But that is not ordained this time any more than it was in 1918. If we are to progress once we have the pandemic under firm control we need an agenda for action. This is my draft.

First and most daunting is the economy. It has been ravaged by eight months of lockdowns. Our debts are Himalayan-high – a national debt of over £2 trillion (thousand million) and a budget deficit of probably £350bn. The mind boggles.

Yet every day brings demands for more cash we don’t have to be poured in. This brands the likes of Andy Burnham, Mayor of Greater Manchester, as utterly shameless – and stupid with it.

And just when we need a united effort behind a recovery plan we find our nation more disunited than ever. It’s not just the Scots ever more loudly and inconsistently demanding independence in Europe. The Welsh are also playing up. Northern Ireland is less Unionist and the north of England is in uproar about measures to fight the virus.

Where did they put their responsibility? It is no excuse to say interest rates are historically low and that this is a good time to borrow. They won’t always be low – thereby adding to the bill that we are imposing on our grandchildren and their successors.

In short, we need to firmly root in our minds Mr Micawber’s dictum: “Annual income £20, annual expenditure £19.96, result happiness. Annual income £20, annual expenditure £20.06, result misery.”

This is urgently necessary when there is a strong possibility we shall Brexit on December 31 without a deal.

Right now we are in a miserable state – much of it caused by a short term and well-meaning effort to protect jobs.

This has serious implications for the NHS with its limitations already there for all to see. It may have coped with coronavirus but it has most certainly not coped with a host of other illnesses, some terminal, and the GP service seems to have gone to pot in some places.

When you look at the NHS’s administrative failures, it is clear that the national sacred cow needs root and branch reform to provide a service that properly caters for the population from cradle to grave. And that will have to be accomplished with money very tight indeed.

It would help, too, if public and private services started showing, as distinct from saying, that “we value your custom”. The banks haven’t a clue what their customers look like because they never see them if they can avoid it. It also demands a patience totally alien to my nature to reach different services by ’phone.

It goes without saying that the atmosphere would be revolutionised if every executive volunteered to live within a Prime Minister’s means (£150,000 a year) until things are looking up. I am not holding my breath.

My agenda also demands urgent attention to our defence and security with the Western democracies possibly as weak as they have ever been vis a vis the Communist predators – Russia and China.

That is essential if we are to preserve what is left of our freedom when the police are occupied chasing so-called hate crime instead of hardened crooks who are systematically robbing public and private purses and laying siege to our youngsters, notably with drugs.

Have the multiplying, tunnel-visioned and hyper-sensitive single issue pressure groups no conscience? It is an utter blot on our education system not just that it produces these zealots but that our universities positively nurture them.

It follows from all this that if we are to see better times – and they are not just around the corner, Boris Johnson please note – we urgently need a new approach if decadence is not to set in.

It’s time we got real.

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Thank you

James Mitchinson

Editor