Virus

Virus

The future of the world is normally only of concern to desiccated academics. The well-trailed environmental apocalypse to be visited on our grandchildren, if not our children, was occluded by the imperatives of consumption and aspiration, the engine of the economy. Now, in the absence of most immediate distractions, the shape of the future and floundering for a purpose to the present, is the legitimate preoccupation of us all.

Regime changing adventures, hubristically initiated for domestic political advantage and built on brittle ideological foundations, notoriously lack exit strategies. While this campaign still in its infancy, predictions about its resolution multiply. None is too gloomy, or too optimistic or too far-fetched to gain traction in some quarter.

This historical inflection point is marked by firsts. Exeter Cathedral is closed for the first time in three centuries; the pubs are closed for the first time in – well, who knows how long; ditto schools, shops, National Trust houses. Of the government’s edicts, the most curious relates to curtailing exercise. People have been told to limit themselves to getting off the couch just once a day and abjure places most conducive to outdoor pursuits, such as national parks and suburban playgrounds. In a nation not noted for its devotion to physical activity, with the obesity statistics to prove it, such a prohibition seems de trop.

As the satirists were trumped by politicians’ iniquities over Brexit last year, so is the left wing now discombobulated by the radical on-the-hoof policies of the most electorally secure and doctrinaire Tory government since Margaret Thatcher. Nationalising the railways, refusing to bail out airlines, meeting employees’ wage bills; it has not merely parked its tanks on Labour’s front lawn, it has rewilded the entire estate. Hell, at this rate, by installing thousands of new beds in privately owned conference centre and exhibition halls, including the Excel Centre (notorious for staging international arms fairs), Boris might even fulfil his election promise of creating forty new hospitals.

© David Thompson 2020