Strayside Sunday is our weekly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

A Russian, an Englishman and an American.  No, not the first line of a bad joke but rather friends with whom I have discussed our current predicaments during the last 7 days.

The Russian reminded me of a saying of which her family in the Urals are fond.  “The cow that moo’s loudest”, they say, “bares no milk.” This in the midst of a discussion about the merits of political leadership here at home and across the pond.  Boris Johnson and Donald Trump being the most vocal bovines in their respective cow stalls.

Boris has always had a lot to say, and of course he says it with an almost unmatched elan and a vocabulary matched only in its breadth by its intermittent obscurity.  For some though, Boris is no more than a highbinder, an empleomaniac, a fustilarian snollygoster, in short, a bit of cockalorum.  Or at least that’s how we talk about him, round our way.  The thing is, what we actually need now is sensible political leadership and prosaic policy.  Less show; more go.  A steady hand on the tiller from which we can all draw confidence and succour.

And confidence, it seems, is a commodity in short supply in the parliamentary Conservative Party at the moment.  For months now the government has been unable to get out ahead of the exigencies created by Covid-19.  It has lurched from one panic policy announcement to the next, led by the science, which is itself modelling the unknowable.  For Conservative MP’s not in government, they must follow the party whip into the voting lobbies and are then left to explain their flip-floppery to angry, frustrated and frightened constituents.  Collective responsibility breaks down when contradictory changes of direction happen too often and expose those bound by it to the charge of hypocrisy.

So for once I find myself in sympathy with Harrogate MP Andrew Jones, who this week voted with the government to support a national lockdown, having declared at the end of October, again in support of the government, that local measures were now needed and that a national lockdown would be “wrong.”  The discomfort Mr. Jones may feel at his public change of mind is the price he pays for his loyalty to party, an unfashionable virtue in modern politics, especially in a tribe noted, at the best of times, for behaving like ‘ferrets in a sack’.

Is a second national lockdown actually the right thing to do?  Steve Russell, the Chief Executive of Harrogate Hospital believes so.  In an interview in these pages this week Mr Russell pointed out that the existing (local tiered) lockdowns were not “slowing the pressure enough” under which Covid-19 infections are placing our hospitals.  Indeed, the one consistent part of government policy and communication throughout the crisis has been its protection of the NHS and its bed capacity.  NHS staff face the coming months with real anxiety, aware as they are of the dangers of what policy makers call “winter pressures.”  The only way for us to help is to do our bit and comply with the inconveniences of lockdown.

Is there any other way?  Perhaps, but it would involve targeting specific groups – the clinically vulnerable and those over the age of 65 – and imposing differential measures upon them.  There is precedent.  During the Second World War 1.5m children were separated from their families and evacuated, for their safety and the national good, from our major cities.  An Englishman I know, a highly successful septuagenarian, undeniably an establishment figure, is of the opinion that he and his peers should be locked down to enable the rest of the economy to function freely and give young people a better chance of getting employment. Is that feasible? I'd be interested to know what you think.

Notwithstanding the current maelstrom at home, I thank my lucky stars and stripes that I live in Britain, rather than the United States.   This week I have been exchanging transatlantic emails with my distraught American university roommate, a Delaware native and lifelong follower and booster of Sleepy Joe.  John was four years old when Mr. Biden was first elected to the Senate from his home state, so he grew up watching him closely, voting for him early and often and, like Joe, he believes passionately in consensus, moderation, dialogue and tolerance.

As legal firearms and ammunition flew off the shelves during the last weeks of the US election campaign, and the sitting President, through force of personality from the bully pulpit was advocating the uniquely American proclivity for litigation to undo the same democratic process through which he was elected four short years ago, my friend and I communed in angst.  We worry that the world is becoming ungovernable, that our challenges are so acute and our divisions are so deep rooted that reason and compromise are falling out of reach, and that we are seeing a world in which to say something untrue frequently enough and with sufficient gusto will transform the lie to factual truth.

For my part I believe now is the time to double down on the collectivist spirit and to cherish community. Division needs no excuse to take root in difference, from whichever land you hail. We really are all in this together and that is never more true on this day, above all others, when we remember the fallen and their act of sacrifice for all of us.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

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