Tories must guide us out of this mess
The decision to board up the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, to protect it from protesters, says much about the state of Britain today. The Prime Minister called it “shameful”: yes, Churchill held some opinions that belong in the past, but he led Britain to victory in the Second World War, defeating Hitler and his racist ideology. As some have pointed out, if the protesters think Churchill harboured questionable views, wait until they hear about the man he beat.
But it’s not only the vandals who come out of this badly, it’s also a political class that struggles to command authority and a police force that can no longer guarantee law and order – all in the middle of a pandemic that has triggered the greatest economic contraction on record. The monthly fall in GDP for April was 20.4 per cent; the biggest monthly drop before this crisis was just 2 per cent. The state has stepped in to carry the burden, but just because it is bigger doesn’t mean it is any more competent. The bureaucratic lockdown resembles quicksand. The harder we struggle to free ourselves, the more we appear stuck.
Britain is boarded up, too. It’s true that every nation has struggled with Covid-19, and if the UK has suffered harder than most then it’s partly because we are densely populated, an international hub and over-reliant on the service economy. But in other countries, shops are now open and children are going back to school. Here, we discovered this week that we probably will not be reopening all schools before September, and possibly not even then. This is intolerable. Until all children can return to the classroom, millions of parents cannot return to work – and the long-term effects upon our competitiveness are incalculable.
Some teaching unions, incredibly, have congratulated themselves over this. Labour demands to know why the schools are closed, but only a few weeks ago was insisting they not open too soon – for there are political points to be scored, even among people whose reaction to the pandemic was the most hysterical. Sadiq Khan, the mayor of our capital city, has hampered recovery by hiking the congestion charge and cutting Tube services. “London is Open” declared his showboating anti-brexit campaign, a slogan that now lingers on empty streets like a bad joke: if only Mr Khan was half as good at fighting crime as he is at jumping on Left-wing bandwagons.
It was Mr Khan who gave the humiliating order that Churchill be hidden from view, seeming to confirm that Britain cannot police itself – it can only hide its valuables.
The sight must cut right to the core of the Prime Minister. Churchill is his idol; he embodies the kind of Britain that Boris Johnson would dearly love to build, which is energetic, outwardlooking, cheerfully eccentric and willing to take risks. Many of us feel the same. Throughout the pandemic, whenever we wanted to lift our spirits, it was invariably to comparisons with the Blitz that the nation turned – celebrating that spirit of unity and self-sacrifice that Churchill pulled together with his rhetoric. A few weeks ago, even the Left was all for historically infused solidarity: suddenly, history is “problematic” again and Britain is told it must be ashamed of everything that happened the day before yesterday. These cultural tensions are only going to worsen as the full effect of the pandemic is felt, when shops do not reopen, planes do not take off and millions realise they have not been furloughed but sacked.
We need a Conservative response to a moment of profound economic and cultural anxiety, one that gives the country confidence that it is being led by people with a solid grasp of history and philosophy – people who know the difference between legitimate protest and criminality – and who can chart a course that protects the most vulnerable from Covid-19 while encouraging the rest of society, in creative ways, to go back to normal.
Britain should not be boarding up Churchill. It should be turning to him for inspiration.
We have a political class that struggles to command authority and a police force that can no longer guarantee law and order