Kevin McKenna: Let’s save our fury for something worse than Downing Street parties

Other things are happening in Britain right now. The Government is on the cusp of passing an act of Parliament which will strip the world’s most vulnerable people of all vestiges of basic human dignity. As asylum-seekers – often fleeing regional chaos caused by Britain’s wars of adventure capitalism – await their fate, Priti Patel would like to hold them in off-shore facilities.

So, 58 years after America’s enlightened and progressive law enforcement community shut down Alcatraz, a British Home Secretary wants to revive the concept for asylum-seekers. Anyone who foolishly tries to save the lives of these wretched people without prior government approval faces a jail term.

And as the affluent west wrings its hands about how to deal with the Omicron variant of Covid-19 few of us are looking at the low vaccination rates in Africa. While almost 70% of the UK has been double-jabbed, in Africa it’s around 6%. This means that new variants are able to flourish relatively unchallenged throughout the African continent. When these start to arrive at our shores we don’t really have to look far for someone to blame.

The New York Times reported that Pfizer made $3.5bn in revenue from its Covid vaccines in the first quarter of 2021. By the end of the year it expects to make $10bn. It is, by some measure, the company’s biggest source of revenue. Predictably, its vaccine marketing strategy is to target the world’s richest nations. Yet, the company’s chief executive had pledged that poorer countries would “have the same access as the rest of the world”.

Let’s see how that’s working. In the immediate aftermath of its roll-out programme, according to the New York Times, wealthy countries had secured more than 87 percent of the 700m vaccines dispensed worldwide, while poor countries had received only 0.2 percent. Numbers provided by the World Health Organisation show that Pfizer has provided scant help to the world’s poorest countries. The massive spike in profits, derived purely from a global health pandemic, has made the founders of another pharmaceutical firm, Moderna, billionaires overnight. Yet, still there is a reluctance to share their vaccines freely with poor countries.

In Scotland, where the population density of its largest urban areas acts as an accelerant for Covid-19, a perfect storm of social inequality is brewing. Families living on low incomes and lacking any employment security will find it even more difficult to come up for air as the virus continues to move through us. Reports have indicated that women – particularly single mothers – and minority ethnic families have suffered disproportionately in the pandemic.

In last week’s budget, lacking any joined-up strategy to address multi-deprivation after 14 years in government, the SNP simply shifted responsibility for spending priorities onto local authorities. And anyone expecting something radical in Kate Forbes’ tax strategy to address inequality, were, predictably, deluding themselves. Affluent households will do far better than poorer ones. Equally predictably, Ms Forbes blamed Brexit and Covid for the limited scale of her spending plans. Something that cheerfully ignores the pre-Brexit and pre-Covid rises in child poverty under her party.

This though, is Christmas 2021. And so, what really sparks outrage is none of the above. Instead it’s the thought that the Prime Minister and his staff were breaking lockdown restrictions with a half-hearted knees-up in Downing Street. Stewart MacDonald, the SNP’s member for NATO, was very upset by the thought of a party at Number Ten. He suggested that if there had been a party at Bute House press outrage would have been boundless. How would we know? Accounts of spontaneous merrymaking by this grim shower are scarcer than vegetarian alligators.

Let’s speak frankly here. People aren’t really outraged that Boris Johnson and his advisors were having quizzes and farewell gatherings in Downing Street during lockdown. It’s because he wiz and we wurny.

In First World Britain, a Conservative Prime Minister is facing a press backlash which, according to Andrew Marr on the BBC yesterday, was unprecedented in his 40 years of reporting politics. Worse than the final days of Thatcher, Maastricht or the psycho-drama of Theresa May’s last faltering days.

We’ve had 18 months of corrupt behaviour in the PPE market by a morally bankrupt government and accelerating rates of inequality. We’ve got the world’s most inhumane attitude towards asylum-seekers and refugees. But what’s actually caused the British people to revolt and Twitter to emote is that there was some sort of Christmas gathering at Downing Street. Judging by the pictures and reports, I’ve seen more jollity and good cheer at a Glasgow funeral.

Worse than all of this, of course, is that a wearily familiar and mind-numbing monotony of SNP figures have gathered to jeer. Ian Blackford thinks that shouting ‘resign’ will transform him from Mickey Mouse into thundering statesman. There wasn’t a word of concern from any of them that Nicola Sturgeon was wandering about the Cop26 mask-less while photo-bombing world leaders who had joined 25,000 others for a meaningless two-week jolly on the banks of the Clyde.

And let’s consider this. We’re being directed to experience rage at a dodgy, year-old lockdown party. Yet, the SNP want us all to remain calm about being the first-ever government actively to groom its young people by means of a survey about their sexual preferences. The Children’s Commissioner thinks this could breach these children’s basic human right to privacy. The SNP and their media glove-puppets think it’s cuddly and progressive.

It also saves them asking serious questions about why there are disproportionate rates of childhood pregnancy and sexual illiteracy in Scotland’s poorest communities. You don’t need a questionnaire to answer that one.

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