There is no challenge to the narrative that the Covid-19 emergency has passed

The response to Covid-19 transformed politics, but now we’re sliding back into regular politics. Covid-19 hasn’t gone away, even if the new Omicron variant is less deadly. But the emergency politics of Covid-19 is going away. 

This is because the narrative that Covid-19 is extraordinarily dangerous and requires an emergency response from all of society is being replaced by a narrative that the extraordinary danger has passed, even if Covid-19 itself hasn’t passed. No leading political figures, both politicians and press, are challenging this shift or presenting an alternative to it.

It’s worth taking a look at how this has happened over the last few months.

The end of Plan B restrictions

A few weeks ago, Boris Johnson announced the end to all Plan B Covid-19 restrictions as part of his attempt to save his premiership. Not that many new restrictions were brought in during the pre-Christmas Omicron surge. Here in England, things were considerably more relaxed than in Scotland and Wales. The reason why we didn’t have many new restrictions imposed on us (even after the end of the Christmas period) is that Johnson couldn’t get his cabinet, his MPs, or his party to support them.

To get the restrictions that were passed through parliament, Johnson relied on Labour. Being a Prime Minister with a sizable majority and needing the opposition to pass key votes is humiliating for any Prime Minister and maybe one embarrassment that Teflon Boris is unable to shrug off. Johnson looks weak, vulnerable and likely to fall at any moment.

By supporting Johnson’s restrictions before Christmas, Labour was propping up a Prime Minister they could let die the death of a thousand cuts. I can see why Keir Starmer doesn’t want restrictions, which he views as vital to saving lives, to fail. Although, turning his support for the ailing Prime Minister into a sermon on how Labour is a patriotic party seemed a little heavy-handed.

Johnson clings to power

Allowing Johnson to cling to power to get Covid-19 restrictions passed and claiming this is all for the good of the country is just another example of how Starmer is out of touch with most voters. Yes, lots of voters (especially those Labour needs to win over) consider themselves patriotic, but a public address that resembles a Command and Conquer briefing isn’t what they had in mind.

Starmer’s enthusiasm for lockdowns is another way he is out of step with the country. He is attempting to look like a decisive leader who cares about the health of the people, in contrast to Johnson who dithers and then reluctantly decides to act when the hospitalisation numbers go from alarming to critical.

Everyone dislikes lockdowns and the public distrusts a leader who is very enthusiastic for them, even if it’s for the right reasons. The fact that Johnson had to be dragged by overwhelming evidence into lockdowns is in line with most people's attitudes, i.e. I’ll do it if I must.

Arguing with people in their head

A lot of the public discourse around lockdowns does appear to be people arguing with opponents who only exist in their heads. People reluctant to enter another lockdown are arguing with the mythical very pro-lockdown person; as if there are many people excited to stay home all the time and not see their friends or family.

Meanwhile, those concerned about the rising number of cases are arguing against the vanishingly few people who think Covid-19 should be allowed to let rip, the healthcare system, the disabled and the elderly be damned.

Almost everyone sits somewhere in between these extremes, willing to lock down to prevent a huge spike in Covid-19 fatalities but finding the mental health or financial effects of lockdown hard to bear. They don’t want people to die, but don’t want to be indefinitely entombed in their homes either.

Everyday politics

The political situation is changing as the disease becomes a part of everyday life, not something strange and alarming that requires special emergency measures. Covid-19 is still scary but, like a looming climate disaster or a war with one of the world’s authoritarian nuclear armed regimes, it’s a terror that is now a part of normal politics.

People are being forced by their employers to work, even if they’re sick with Covid-19. That’s normal for the flu and other infectious diseases. People are working from home if they’re sick and have a job in the knowledge economy, which is also normal. A disease is killing lots of old people and putting massive pressure on the NHS in the winter, but this is largely being shrugged off by the Conservative government as something that happens and not something that needs a political solution. All very normal.

At this point you’re probably screaming into your pillow about how we have ended up with the worst parts of Terry Giliam’s Brazil and Terry Giliam’s 12 Monkeys. Shifting the burden of preventing the spread of a disease that kills thousands of people a year onto low paid, poor and insecure workers is not something that Covid-19 invented. Neither is shrugging and hoping that the problem goes away every time the NHS lets out a desperate scream of agony in the run up to Christmas. Catching Covid-19 might be worse than catching the flu, but in many ways our political system is treating Covid-19 very much like the flu.

Becoming endemic

The pandemic produced an emergency response. Two years of restrictions, three lockdowns and two Christmas panics later we’ve managed to jab almost everyone and found out that Covid-19 is not like measles, where one jab gives you all the protection you need. Covid-19 is more like the flu where jabs are helpful, as is good hygiene and wearing masks on public transport if you think you have it, but not something that’s going away anytime soon.

Covid-19 is becoming endemic and is thus colliding with normal politics. The public and politicians will no longer accept emergency response measures. We need to shift to a long-term response. Endemic doesn’t mean Covid-19 is going away and saying it’s becoming like the flu is saying that it will kill lots of people each year and put huge pressure on our health system, but people will largely ignore this.

We will feel the impact of Covid for years to come - there will still be deaths, illness and other losses - but fewer and fewer political ramifications. Unless one political party or politician can find a way to tell a story that weaves Covid-19 in with other political debates to present a vision of the past and future that motivates voters at an election, we will carry on much as we are.

Conversations about death

On Twitter some are saying things along the lines of: “We need to have a conversation about how much death (mainly old and disabled people) is acceptable to get back to normal.” This is to remind us that many thousands of people (mainly old and disabled people) will die if we exit the emergency politics phase of Covid-19 and allow it to become a part of regular politics.

Although shocking, these statements are not having a political impact because they are not creating an alternative narrative to “the emergency has passed and thus Covid-19 is becoming part of normal politics”. If we don’t want Covid-19 to become like the flu (deadly to many but without political consequences) then we need to tell a story about what society will be like when we seek to minimise Covid-19 deaths.

No alternative to the status quo

I don’t know what this society will be like and I’m not hearing much about it. There are no answers to Covid-19, only questions. There are no suggestions, only angry shouts. This isn’t an alternative to the status quo.

There is no coherent alternative to Covid-19 becoming part of normal politics and normal life. No clear call to what we should be doing differently. This means the era of extraordinary measures will end and it will be back to normality, with Covid-19.

2021: The year we failed to rebuild

2020 was one of the most eventful years of my life, as every aspect of my existence was turned on its head. By contrast, 2021 was a diminishing returns sequel. A lot of the plot was repeated, but in a tired and boring way. 

At the end of 2021, we haven’t moved much from where we were a year ago. A new Covid-19 variant is causing a surge in cases, further restrictions look imminent and the NHS is under massive strain. At least the government didn’t screw up the vaccine role out and we got to have some fun over the summer.

Politically, it appears that very little has changed either. The Tories still have a stranglehold on power that isn’t letting up anytime soon. Labour are still nowhere close to an electoral breakthrough, even after the Tories have spent another year presiding over chaos, mass death, and scandal after scandal.

Johnson’s goose is cooked

One thing that has changed is that Boris Johnson is no longer sitting pretty in Downing Street. He will most likely finish out the year in Number 10, but it looks unlikely he will be living there next Christmas.

A succession of scandals has meant that, finally, both his party and the public have turned against him. The rank hypocrisy at the heart of Tory rule has been exposed to the nation. Whilst we were all dutifully staying in, and not attending our loved ones’ funerals, Number 10 was enjoying Christmas parties or cheese and wine in the garden.

Johnson is a serial liar and has long been the slipperiest person in British politics. Journalists, campaigners and opposition politicians have tried to hold him accountable for his actions, but he always greases his way out of actual consequences for the things he says and does. Now, this particular greased-up goose appears to be cooked. We have finally found a line of moral reprehensibility that the public (and Tory voters) do care that he crosses.

No thanks to Labour

Johnson appears to have lost his election-winning mojo and the Lib Dems have taken a safe Tory seat in North Shropshire. How long can a party, where a lot of people despise Johnson, keep him around now that he is a drag on their electoral performance and not a boost? Well, Boris, if it isn’t the consequences of your own actions.

None of Johnson’s newfound unpopularity is due to the opposition. In a year where Covid deaths have soared, inflation looks set to spiral and the government is beset by scandal, the Labour Party has taken this opportunity to do nothing.

We’ve had the first full year of Keir Starmer’s leadership and it has been so full of nothing that it’s hardly worth writing about. The only thing that Starmer has shown any effectiveness in doing is organising against the left of his own party. Other than that, Labour lost the by-election in Hartlepool and even I, someone who follows politics closely, cannot tell you what Labour stands for.

What does Labour stand for?

Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour stood for socialism, the end of neoliberalism and a politics based on using the government to help address the country’s deep structural issues, from inequality to the environment. When Corbyn left, there was a lot of noise about how the serious grown-ups were back and the grubby socialists with their wild, unworkable ideas about reducing inequality and helping poor people were gone. Now, after a year of the grown-ups being back in charge, we can see that their clever plan to win back power was to do nothing. Well, I am impressed. Never has so much noise been made by so many about so little. It’s truly remarkable.

Starmer himself has broken many of the pledges that allowed him to win last year’s Labour leadership contest by a large margin. We were reassured that he was Ed Miliband, but with a little more polish, and many Labour members were happy with that. Mentioning patriotism 69 times in every communication wasn’t what we had in mind. Whatever the thinking behind Starmer’s lack of action, it doesn’t appear to be working. At the end of another terrible year for the government, the way forward for Labour doesn’t appear to be any clearer.

Democrats and reality against Republicans

Across the pond, we see a bigger and louder version of the same problem. Joe Biden was the great hope of the left a year ago. The Democrats offered a model of moderation, avoiding divisive social issues and focusing on competence and the economy as a way to beat populism. One year later, the great hope appears to be more of a damp squib. The Democrats’ Build Back Better program looks unlikely to pass Congress and Biden has not bridged America’s political divide.

The strategy of compromise to produce change has led to compromises on the plans for change and ultimately a compromise on nothing. America is as rabid as ever, and over a year on from the 2020 election, a staggering number of Americans still believe the complete bullshit that Donald Trump actually won. Even to the point of invading the Capitol building earlier this year and killing five people. If the Dems can’t win with reality on their side, then there really is no hope for them.

Meanwhile, China wants to invade Taiwan, Russia wants to invade Ukraine, Ethiopia is invading itself, the sea is trying to invade the land and Omicron wants to invade my body. If we really are planning on using Covid-19 as a chance to build a better society we had better get going on that. Because everyone with authority is at best doing nothing and at worst making everything, well, worse.

The dominance of the right

Globally the left appears in dire straits. The Danish Labour Party won an election by offering radical left-wing economic policies (yay) but also, er, rallying against refugees. I would be worried that Starmer would get some bad ideas from this, but that would require him to express an opinion. The right has seized the initiative by blustering about many voters’ problems with the neoliberal economic order. By promising to ‘level up’ or take on Wall Street, many former left-wing voters have switched to the right. 2021 was not the year they came home.

It has to be said that much of this switching has been caused by fears (stoked by the right) of immigration, trans people and young lefties with dangerous, radical ideas like treating people fairly and not dying in one of those tornadoes made of fire they now have in Australia. If you’re voting for Johnson or Trump because you hate trans people having the freedom to be themselves, or refugees looking for a place to call home, then you have no right to call yourself left-wing no matter who you voted for in the past, what union you’re in, or whether you hate people who went to Eton as much as the next person.

A dangerously radical platform

It’s easy to say that the left should run away from the debates that turn boomers the colour of Abbot Ale at their mere mention, in the hope of winning these boomers’ votes to do something as yet undefined about all the terrible things happening in the world. That plan isn’t going well in Britain or America, and it also involves shafting the young, ethnic minorities and everyone whose ideas about sexuality are more complex than whatever passed for sex education in 1963. That’s not a left I want to be a part of.

We can see where the Tories’ levelling up agenda has got us. The Northern leg of HS2 has been scrapped. So, the plan to level up the North is to build trains in the South. Remember, you can’t trust the Tories to sort out regional or any other kind of inequality. The left could be making hay from all this. Labour can rebalance the economy and make sure that women and people of colour don’t have to fear the police, all whilst not having illegal parties when people are dying. That shouldn’t be a dangerously radical platform. That should be common sense.

Time is running out

There was a part of the year where it looked like the pandemic was over and we might get some normality back. Now, that seems like a beautiful dream that we had to wake up from and smell the omicron-flavoured cheese. The sense of politics returning to normal was short-lived and everything, politics included, seems to be back where it was at the start of the year.

In 2021 we failed to rebuild or make anything better for the world. Now we are 20% through the crucial decade to avert the looming environmental disaster, and the best we have to show for it is a lukewarm commitment from COP26 this year. The left needs to get serious about the change we can and should offer the world. The established organs of Labour and the Democrats aren’t going to do it, so we have to do it ourselves. And do it now. Time is running out.

2020: The year that things fell apart

For the last five years politics has been many things, but it has rarely been dull. Despite the rollercoaster of unexpected twists, turns and sudden jolts of the last five years, I didn’t expect 2020 to be such an extraordinary year. Words like “extraordinary” “unprecedented” and “challenging” have been so overused in the last 12 months that they have ceased to have any meaning, but that is because this has been an “extraordinary” year and it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on all the unbelievable things (most of them bad) that have happened. 

At the start of the year, when Jeremy Corbyn was still Labour leader and Britain was still in the EU, almost no one had predicted the impact that the novel coronavirus, aka Covid-19, would have on the world. However, from mid-March onwards people worldwide have been subjected to lockdowns, event cancellations, periods of isolation, travel bans and endless discourse about the R-rate. In some countries the health service has been driven almost to the point of collapse and several times this year it looked touch and go for our beloved NHS.

Covid-19’s impact has been such that it has divided politics into the old, pre-pandemic politics and the new pandemic politics. Years of slow, anemic growth since the 2000’s great recession was brought to an end this year, when the UK experienced its sharpest economic contraction ever. Last year I pointed out that we were overdue a recession and that the “impact of a second recession after years of anemic growth could be devastating.” At the time I didn’t know how much of an understatement this was. Even if the UK can roll out a Covid-19 vaccine next year, we’re likely to be looking at many years of a painful, slow recovery.

Covid-19 made everything worse

In many ways Covid-19 has changed everything. Rishi Sunak, a fiscally conservative Chancellor, has embraced massive borrowing and massive government intervention into the economy to keep Britain on life support, in the hope of making it through the pandemic. For this he briefly enjoyed immense popularity, but now the old politics of austerity and large public debts is rearing its head again, and Sunak’s commitment to balanced budgets during a time of economic hardship and health uncertainty has caused his start to wane.

Covid-19 has rubbed salt into the wounds of this country’s already battered social fabric. Inequality has become worse during the lockdown, as has child poverty, housing uncertainty and almost everything that can be made worse by the combination of a health crisis and an economic recession has been made worse. There’s even talk of a “K shaped recovery” where certain regions or sectors of the economy rapidly bounce back and others do not.

There is almost nothing that is bad about Britain that Covid-19 hasn't made worse, from the brunt of the pandemic being born by overstretched health workers, to people on zero hour contracts working in manual labour or in the care profession being the ones most likely to get sick, to the fact that Covid-19 has become the subject of misinformation and culture wars.

Spreading the virus and spreading misinformation

People like Laurence Fox - a perpetual attention seeker, stirrer of internet outrage and spreader of dangerous ideas about the severity of the virus - who would have been considered too crude to be shock-jocks in the past have become household names by railing against the common sense precautions of staying home and wearing a mask during a pandemic.

The fact that sane, rational people - people who don’t see signs of a conspiracy behind every health briefing - don’t have any effective counter-arguments to use against the people who have the deadly combination of not much knowledge about the virus, but loud views about how we should handle it, and that social media platforms spread disinformation with wild abandon, is an indictment of the human race’s ability to communicate in the age of unlimited communication.

New depths of incompetence

The virus has thrown a wrecking ball at the already crumbling facade of British society and any government - especially one only a few months into its term of office - would have struggled with this challenge, but Boris Johnson’s Tory government has managed to plunge new depth of indecision, incompetence and corruption, that even the last four years of continuous political disaster didn’t lead us to expect.

Each month has brought along what would have once been a regime ending fuck up. From not locking down quickly enough, to unlocking too soon, to failing to deliver a test and trace system despite spending billions on it, to not providing enough PPE for health workers and then, of course, the government saying we would unlock for Christmas and then canceling Christmas at that last minute.

On top of all that, there was Dominic Cummings shredding the little remaining credibility the government had with his misadventure to Barnard Castle over the summer. I’m sure I have forgotten some other titanic disasters, which appeared to be career ending at the time, but have since been forgotten. This year no one was held accountable, made to resign or even look publicly ashamed in the never-ending parade of screw ups that the government presided over.

Forensic opposition

This seemingly endless carnival of mishandlings, including the UK having the highest number of excess deaths in Europe, has not led to a dramatic change in the polls. The Labour Party, despite offering “forensic opposition”, has not been able to exploit the government’s serial failings or present itself as a credible alternative government. During the summer they ceded the position of official opposition to Marcus Rashford, the country’s only successful political operator, who managed to get some food to hungry children, whilst everything fell apart.

Labour’s inability to make a breakthrough happened despite repeated government failures, a new Labour leader and a new style of constructive opposition. The Tories won 44% of the vote in last year's general election and at the end of a disastrous year they are polling at around 40%, which is nothing short of a disgraceful performance from the Labour leader. Surely, any other Labour leader would be 20 points ahead when faced with the worst government ever.

Trump and Biden

The left managed to perform a little better in America this year, which offers some hope. The year began with the Democrats’ failure to impeach Donald Trump, before Covid-19 swept through the country and changed everything. Trump’s re-election campaign was set against the backdrop of rising Covid-19 fatalities and his indulgence of his own worst instinct to sow confusion, spread misinformation and fuel culture wars at a time when his country needed clear leadership.

America managed a spectacularly disastrous response to the pandemic, which made the British government look almost competent. Joe Biden and the Democrats were able to eke out an electoral victory and the world breathed a sigh of relief that by mid-January, we could at least be reassured that the end of the world wouldn’t be brought about someone saying means things to the President of the United States on Twitter.

By choosing Biden, the Democrats rejected the chance of offering a radical alternative to Trump's nationalism early on in the year and decided to run on the platform of a return to normality. In a year where everything fell apart, I can see why this appealed to many voters. However, Biden won some key states by only a percentage point or two, the Democrats lost seats in the House and the Senate remained in Republican control.

Not a repudiation of Trumpism

This wasn’t the repudiation of Trumpism that the world wanted. Despite the virus killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, the economic ruin it produced, riots on the street and his obvious unsuitability for the job of President, Trump still managed to win over 74 million votes and many believe the lies Trump is spreading about the election being stolen from him.

Even if Trump leaves The White House peacefully in January - which is still undecided - Trumpism will continue under Trump or another leader. The left doesn't have a counter narrative to halt the spread of Trump’s violent nationalism, which even won over a reasonable amount of minority voters in the November election. The US election doesn't offer any help in resolving the left’s ongoing post-2008 identity crisis.

Brexit rumbles on

The UK is ending the year with the possibility that Brexit will be over, now that Johnson has negotiated a trade deal with the EU. The usual Brexit intransigence over issues of sovereignty and fishing led us to yet another cliff edge, which once again we were only saved from at the last minute. Brexit is still a bad idea and there is still no way of stopping the slow roll towards belligerent nationalism that David Cameron began over five years ago.

Despite the many failures of Brexit, those opposed to it have consistently failed to present an argument that offers an alternative that voters actually want. This year saw hardcore Labour Remainers abandon their crusade against Brexit and finally declare that it is a losing issue for Labour. The country is still split along Brexit lines and nothing has managed to heal this divide and bring either the left or the country together. Not even the fight against Covid-19.

Now certain sections of the right are planning the next round of divisive, culture war politics by starting a campaign for a referendum on the reintroduction of the death penalty. Apparently, the country isn’t divided enough, angry enough and we aren’t directing enough spite at each other for the professional outrage merchants of the right. We have the resurfacing of this issue to look forward to.

The Labour Party

This lack of clear direction of progress for the left can be most clearly seen in the Labour Party. Keir Starmer won this year’s Labour leadership election by a huge margin, but has had little success against this monstrously incompetent Tory government. There is no uniting line of attack or narrative. Labour is not a party of economic populism, or pragmatic centrism, or liberalism, or social democracy, or socialism.

The Tories are still polling at around 40%, despite everything. Most voters don't blame the Tories for the virus or its effects. They see other countries with large numbers of cases and struggling health systems, and don't see how the situation is worse in the UK. This is a failure of the opposition to articulate a narrative about the government mishandling the outbreak of Covid-19.

On the 27th of February this year, it was the 120th anniversary of the founding of the Labour Party. A sobering thought is that Labour has been in power for only 32 of those 120 years and currently the party looks a long way off winning power. Labour won’t win an election if one happens next year. The party still has no way to bridge the divide between Bolsover and Bethnal Green. Labour are also struggling in Scotland and have no hope of forming a majority government without winning back a significant volume of seats north of the border.

Why isn’t the left doing better?

What story could unite the country? A vision of economic radicalism? Patriotic left economic populism? Biden style return to normality? I don’t know, but Labour (and the left more broadly) need to decide the story we want to tell, if we want to start winning again. As this year has shown, saying “we’re not the Tories'' isn't enough. The Tories are handling everything terribly, yet this hasn’t led to a huge swing towards Labour. Labour needs a story to tell to win voters over.

After a year of disasters for right-wing governments worldwide, why isn’t the left doing any better? We are still adapting to the post-2008 crisis world, let alone figuring out where we need to be for the post-Covid-19 world. A new Labour leader and the US election didn’t answer the question of what does a vote for a left-wing party mean in the 21st century?

What story are we telling that voters can believe in? What does our movement stand for? What will we change when in power?  These are the questions we urgently need answers to as the world needs a left alternative to the status quo quickly.

New challenges for 2021

The environment is getting worse. This year started with bushfires in Australia that showed the danger we face from the looming environmental disaster. The Tories have committed to a program of environmental policies, which doesn’t go far enough and has opened up a new front of the culture war. Nigel Farage, Laurence Fox and a host of other far-right personalities are ready to make resistance to environmentalism a right-wing populist issue. We can see how this will play out with the battles that are already happening over cycle lanes in Kensington and Chelsea. The left needs to be ready for this fight.

Next year offers a series of challenges to the left. There will be Holyrood elections and the SNP are likely to win by a lot, which will put the issue of Scottish Independence back on the agenda in a big way. This offers problems for Labour whose position on Independence is at odds with the views of many of their target voters. Labour needs an effective story to tell in Scotland, quickly.

Labour will also need to make sure that the vaccine is rolled out fairly and effectively. I’m confident that the government will find a way to screw that up as well.

The roaring 20s

Then what? People are talking about another “roaring 20s”, of hedonism and indulgence after the vaccine is rolled out. However, we all remember how the last roaring 20s ended up: with economic collapse and the rise of fascism.

The future contains some huge challenges for the left, from the environment, to threats to the union, to far-right nationalism. The left hasn’t been able to use Covid-19 and the failure of right-wing governments to win popularity this year. We need to think about why this is, what we want differently in the future and what story we want to tell to win over voters. And we need to do this quickly.

Why Labour needs a narrative about how the country can rebuild better after lockdown

Recently, I wrote about how the Labour Party needs a new narrative to start winning again. Labour needs to tell a story, which connects with the electorate, about how things would be different under a Labour government. This story needs to resonate with people outside the echo chambers of left-wing social media and reach out to people across the country.

This needs to be a story about how things will be better after the Covid-19 crisis. As I write we are still in lockdown, the virus is a major threat, people have lost of their jobs, the economy is likely to experience a huge contraction and there is no clear sign of when we’re likely to get back to anywhere near normal. Right now, people need hope to get them through this difficult time.

What would give us hope is a narrative about how the world will be better post lockdown. We don’t need a story about how we’ll get back to normal. Normal wasn’t very good for a lot of people. It wasn’t good for the people with low paid insecure work. It wasn’t good for the people on Universal Credit who are struggling unable to feed their families. It wasn’t good for the people living in poor-quality housing. It wasn’t good for the people who don’t have anywhere to live at all.

The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal

Normal wasn’t good for the environment. We have less than 12 years to make some really serious changes to the way we live if we’re going to avert the worse of the environmental catastrophe. Before March this year, it didn’t look like it was possible for human society to change so dramatically. Then we found that, given the will to act, huge social changes can be delivered quickly. The planet cannot afford for us to go back to normal after the Covid-19 crisis. We need a new normal, for the sake of both the environment and the people who inhabit it.

There are encouraging signs that some people within the Labour Party are thinking about the need to rebuild differently after the Covid-19 crisis. In a recent Guardian article former Labour leader and current Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband said that “the current moment is a contemporary equivalent of what happened after 1945.”

He added that: “It’s never too early to start thinking about the future, to think about what kind of world we want to build as we emerge from this crisis. I think we owe it to have a sort of reassessment of what really matters in our society, and how we build something better for the future.”

Miliband gave a few more specifics saying: “I think we should be aiming for the most ambitious climate recovery plan in the world,” and that: “That should be nothing less than the government’s ambition. The old argument that you can have economic success or environmental care is just completely wrong.”

Engaging young voters

The need for this to be a green recovery is especially pressing for a key group of voters, a group that has remained loyal to Labour through Miliband’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership and the ups and downs of Brexit: the young. Of course in British politics, the young is everyone under 45. I don’t feel young, but apparently I am, which is nice.

The divide between young and old is one of the starkest dividing lines in politics. The young generally voted Remain and are more engaged with Black Lives Matter and trans rights. On the whole, the young favour more left-wing economic policies and, crucially, care more about the environment than the old. The environment is a key issue for us young voters and leading with this is a good way for Labour to keep the young onside.

The young are also much more likely to be hit hardest by the recession that is currently unfolding (just as we were more likely to be hit hardest by the last one). A recent study from the Resolution Foundation found that more than 600,000 more young people could become unemployed this year because of coronavirus.

Own the future

A narrative about how the country could be a better, fairer, greener place after Covid-19 is what young people need now to give them hope that something good can come from the suffering that the coronavirus has unleashed. While Tories are struggling with the present - enforcing the lockdown, keeping the economy on life support, dealing with whatever stupid thing Dominic Cummings has done this week - Labour need to own the future. They need to tell a story about what happens next.

This story will energise young voters who are already fired up about Labour. It will also reassure them that Kier Starmer’s Labour party values their support as much as Corbyn’s Labour did. It will also offer them encouragement that issues that they are concerned about, from social justice to the environment, are the ones a Labour government will champion.

A story about what a better post-Covid-19 world is what the country needs right now. It’s a story that can transcend the group of people who already support Labour, break out of the left-wing social media echo chambers and bring the country together behind the vision of a Labour government.

How is the Coronavirus changing our politics?

The country is in grip of the most serious threat since 9/11 or Brexit or whatever the last massive existential threat to society was. Maybe, fake news?

No, but this time we really mean it. The coronavirus could kill millions and fundamentally change western society. The economy could collapse and we could all become permanently housebound, only able to interact with each digitally whilst human touch becomes a thing of the past; like people in Wall-E.

Joking aside. This is a scary time. It’s the uncertainty that scares me the most. We don’t know when this will end or what the ending will look like. There’s also the powerlessness. I can stay at home and do nothing, which is the best way to do something in this crisis. As someone who likes to be doing something, I find this difficult.

Is there more than that the government could do?

I don’t think the government is lying to us about the severity of the virus or the economic paralysis we find ourselves in. But I find myself wondering: is there more the government could do to keep us safe or to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus outbreak?

The government could have been clearer about the need to stay home. It didn’t help that Prime Minister Boris Johnson mentioned Britons’ “inalienable right to go to the pub”. For that matter, the government could also have closed pubs and restaurants sooner. 

I’m certain that the NHS will get the money that it needs. Although, the health service and the county would have been better equipped to handle this health crisis had it not come on the back of 10 years of austerity. Austerity that included insufficient health funding, as well as massive cuts to local government and social care.

Welfare is the answer

It also doesn’t help that the government has been cutting welfare for the last 10 years that has pushed more and people into poverty. Now, welfare is the answer. We need to make sure people have enough money to stay home when sick so as not to spread the virus. This means making welfare more generous.

There are also a lot of healthy people who are unable to work because their employers are closed and they cannot work from home. A lot of these people have low wages, they are bar staff or work in restaurants for example. Many more people will need financial support to stay home, so it’s essential that welfare is enough to live off. This flies in the face of Tory ideology, so Tory ideology must be jettisoned to see the country through this crisis.

The government has taken steps to protect small businesses from closure, prevent evictions and allow homeowners to take mortgage holidays. All of these are welcome. The lasting impact of the coronavirus is most likely to be economic devastation is causes and thus we need to change our economy and society to weather this storm.

The times they are changin’

This process of social and economic change has been rapid. The Tory Party, who a few months ago were still committed to keeping government debt falling, are borrowing unprecedented amounts and are announcing spending packages that dwarf the wildest dreams of Labour chancellors.

The social safety net, that has been vigorously chipped away by Tory governments for the ten last 10 years, now looks positively Scandinavian. Now that benefits have been raised, evictions stopped, income protected and accommodation found for homeless people, the population will get used to this being the new normal. Just as we’re getting used to social distancing being the new normal.

Memories of why it was considered necessary to be quite so beastly towards poor people will fade just as our memories of what it was like to go to the cinema or the pub are fading. Haven’t we always just sat inside every day, staring at Netflix whilst eating an odd stew made up of whatever hadn’t been panic bought at Tescos, whilst providing generously for those who couldn’t work?

Damage to the economy

After a few months of this, our previous subjects of devotion, like economic growth, will become meaningless. When the country’s economy has been absolutely ruined by months of no one going anywhere or doing anything, and the only profitable companies make either video conferencing software or do rapid response toilet roll deliveries, then we’ll see that it’s not necessary or desirable roll back the reach of the state in service of the free market. The state’s invisible hand turned out to be useful when a crisis hit.

In order to get through the covid-19 crisis, the government (and everyone) has had to prioritize something other than the strength of the economy: namely the welfare of all citizens. This is now the top priority of the government. After this crisis has passed, we need to make sure that the government keeps the welfare of its citizens as the top priority.

During the Second World War, the government made something other than the economy their top priority: i.e. winning the war. To achieve this, it vastly expanded the reach of the state so that it could manage the war effectively. After the war, when people were used to massive state involvement in their lives, the government continued this huge reach with the birth of the welfare state. Today it this welfare state, from the NHS to generous benefits, that will save us from misery.

Expanding the role of the state

What we are seeing now is similar to what happened during the war. Following years of austerity, the reach of the state is being expanded to protect its citizens during the health crisis. We need to hold onto this reach after the crisis to tackle the problems of austerity: rising homelessness, rising child poverty, work insecurity and inequality to name a few. Above all we need to hold onto the idea that the welfare of citizens is more important than the economy.

It’s worth taking some time to think about the world that will emerge from this crisis. Something as massive as the coronavirus, which is affecting everyone in the country, will mean huge changes to how we live. These are scary times, but we will get through them and come out the other side. However, we will come out changed. We need to think about what we want that change to be, to make sure its change for the better.