AT the beginning of Chapter 10 of Middlemarch, George Eliot has Mr Casaubon’s nephew Will Ladislaw – an idealistic #FBPE type avant la lettre – set off with no “more precise destination than the entire area of Europe”. But the author adds the caveat: “Let him start for the Continent, then, without our pronouncing on his future. Among all forms of mistake, prophecy is the most gratuitous.”
Like so many of that masterpiece’s insights, this observation remains as true as it is largely ignored – as does the novel’s central message, summarised in its great final sentence, that “the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts” by those who lived faithfully and, similarly ignored, “rest in unvisited tombs”.
One heartening aspect of coronavirus has been the widespread appreciation of those who have selflessly contributed to minimising its effects: doctors, nurses, carers and other key workers risking their own health naturally head the list, but there has been recognition, too, of how much we depend upon refuse collectors, utility suppliers, farm workers and those who stack supermarket shelves.
There is a perhaps more surprising level of approval for the authorities: the Conservatives have the highest poll lead of any government for a decade and the Prime Minister’s approval rating with YouGov is the highest since they began measuring it in 2003. In Scotland, the First Minister has, in most people’s estimation, emerged with similar credit.
Naturally, though a minority, there’s no shortage of people who can’t understand why the Tories haven’t yet been prosecuted for genocide, or why the governments at both Westminster and Holyrood persist in following scientific and medical advice, rather than listening to David Icke, Carole Cadwalladr, or some other tin-foil-hatted maniac on Twitter who thinks 5G masts, Vladimir Putin, Big Pharma and the Brexit campaign have orchestrated a pandemic.
Then there are those who’re quite happy to praise institutional responses, so long as they aren’t British. Social media is awash with unfavourable comparisons between other countries and the UK. Certainly, these may be important in learning lessons about how to cope with this disease. Only, however, if like is being compared with like.
Some people are actually managing mistake and prophecy in one fell swoop, by declaring that the UK figures are those which were predicted as a worst-case scenario in a report last week. But they are not.
As of yesterday, the UK wasn’t in the top 10 of European nations for confirmed cases (though that’s probably because we are doing fewer tests). Measuring deaths by population, there are still seven European countries, including France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and the Netherlands with worse, some of them much worse, results.
This is no cause for satisfaction, or any guarantee that we are taking the right course. The numbers could yet become as bad as predicted, and are already worse than several comparable countries. We’re not in a position to judge definitively whether this is a function of when the disease first arrived, rates of transmission, population density, whether isolation is working, or how much immunity the general population now has – and it’s quite likely that no one will be for some time.
The per capita figures from Sweden, which ignored calls for lockdown, for example, are nearly twice Norway’s, but less than Switzerland’s. Germany’s low number of deaths and high testing has come in for praise from Lefties who are horrified to discover that its healthcare system has a large private insurance component of the kind they imagine (not only without any, but against all evidence) is being imposed on the NHS.
Given that UK health spending is just above the OECD median, and higher than a dozen EU countries (some with better results than us, some with worse) – almost all of which have mixed economy systems – its clear that it is the commitment and professionalism of NHS staff, rather than the way it’s structured or paid for, which is making the difference.
In this eagerness to compare the results obtained in different countries, there is an unpleasant sense that there are some people who would rather like the UK to be shown to have followed the wrong course, because they cannot bring themselves to believe the Government has acted with good intentions or even, God forbid, competently. This is reprehensible, but it’s rather like the complacent certainty, and secret hope, of ultramontane Remainers that Brexit would turn out to be a catastrophe.
Of course, those who just can’t abide Boris Johnson have now switched their gaze from Brexit to the coronavirus, to prove he is a “Mad Butcher… embodiment of the Fuhrerprinzep”, as the ravings of the ludicrous AC Grayling put it. Though, naturally, Professor Grayling also thinks the NHS can’t exist unless we’re in the EU.
Yet strangely, there has been almost total silence on the EU from those who were only a few weeks ago contrasting its indispensability, effectiveness, compassion and generosity with the vindictive, inefficient, small-minded racism of those who prefer democratically accountable national government, and the ability to tailor policy responses to their own country’s needs.
That’s because the EU’s input has been negligible or destructive. True, there is a meeting on restructuring later today, but there has been bitter disagreement between member states, and a flat refusal (generally by the northern ones) to pool debt. As with the 2008 crisis, the wealthier nations simply don’t trust Italy, Greece and Spain to pay their way. So this funding is essentially yet more loans, not a shared responsibility for dealing with the costs of the crisis.
Meanwhile, the “indivisible” Schengen open-border policy has gone out the window. The European Commission is ignoring the fact that Hungary has breached most of the democratic requirements of membership. There has been practically no centralised support or direction from Brussels; the EU passed a vote of no confidence in its chief scientist, who has resigned in disgust; the Commision’s vice-president has question whether the EU can survive at all.
Whatever the different countries of Europe are doing, whether effective or mistaken, none is doing as little as the EU. As in Middlemarch, provincial concerns and individual good deeds turn out to be more nurturing and effective than the grand aspirations of all Europe.
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