Now is the time for opposition to this Government

I understand, and sympathise with, reluctance to be seen to be “playing politics” with the global pandemic as the daily death toll rises.

However, the coronavirus pandemic is unavoidably political. Its origins speak of the pressure placed upon our global ecosystem by the growth of, and distributional inequity within, the global economy. Its impact upon the United Kingdom in particular tells of both the impact of a decade of austerity and the grotesque negligence of our rulers (who ignored lessons in front of their face).

The Government’s early response (of suggesting a goal of “herd immunity” at the expense of thousands of deaths) reveals the attitude of our rulers to our elderly and vulnerable (and therefore to working class people generally). The failure adequately to prepare for the foreseeable eventuality of such a pandemic, leaving our health and social care workers at greater risk of infection, is an act of criminal negligence for which those responsible must be held to account.

Authoritative projections suggest that the United Kingdom will see the largest number of deaths in Europe, and this won’t be because a handful of anti-social individuals have ignored guidance on social distancing but because our Government has repeatedly chosen to act (and not to act) in ways which would predictably lead to this outcome.

The pandemic itself has revealed to us aspects of our own existence to us in a deeply political way. Low paid essential workers (nurses and other health service workers, cleaners, refuse collectors, public transport workers) are vital for our existence, whereas the wealthy and powerful are not. Many tasks which managers told their workers they could not carry out remotely can indeed be carried out from home.

Given the political will, every rough sleeper can be given a room for the night. The Government can easily take over the privatised railways. A “magic money tree” can be found for unprecedented intervention in the economy. The Government, in an advanced capitalist economy has the ability to solve “insoluble” social problems.

However, that does depend upon political will – our Government has shown that its political will does not extend to adequate and timely provision of medical equipment or PPE for frontline staff, nor to the level of lockdown that, having been imposed in other European countries, has saved more lives than will be saved here. The Government plans to get us to blame each other rather than them.

Labour needs to hold the Government to account in the here and now for their deadly response to the coronavirus crisis. We also need to argue that “after” coronavirus cannot be the same as “before”. The Tories will claim that the “cost” of rescuing the economy will have to be paid by more austerity – we should seize this moment to propose a shift away from a society based upon profit to one based upon meeting human need.