Scott Hunter, Swindon Socialist Party
The UK Covid-19 Inquiry published its second report on 20 November. Spanning more than 750 pages, the report paints a damning picture of a “toxic and chaotic” Downing Street that leapt from one bad policy to another.
This will come as no surprise to anyone who lived through that time. We remember then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson telling us there was nothing to worry about in February, before a sudden U-turn and lockdown in March. Then, the sudden turn to “eat out to help out” in summer, before being forced to make another hasty about-face and lockdown in Autumn.
Despite living through it, it is still striking to see the scale of the crisis and the government’s complete inability to tackle it summarised in black and white. The report goes into the ‘lost month’ of February 2020, in which the government failed to take the threat of the virus seriously. Most damning of all, the report suggests that – if a lockdown had been imposed a week earlier on 16 March – this could have cut the death toll of the first wave nearly in half, saving some 23,000 lives.
The report levels specific criticism at Johnson and others in Downing Street – including Chris Wormald, then head civil servant at the health department and now Keir Starmer’s cabinet secretary. However, while Johnson and co. have very real blood on their hands, any capitalist government would have displayed a similarly poor response to the threat of the pandemic – indeed, many others did around the world.
Role of the working class
To avoid spreading the virus, people needed to stay physically isolated. Yet, in order to go to work, most people had to be around others. So, the government was confronted with the reality of capitalism, first described by Karl Marx over 150 years earlier: it is the working class that produces all new wealth. The bosses, who we are told are ‘wealth creators’, could not for the life of them produce one iota of wealth without us!
That was the impossible situation facing feeble British capitalism in 2020, and that was why the government did everything it could to avoid a lockdown, until it was too late. Ultimately, they were forced to impose a lockdown and provide relief – though inadequate – through the furlough scheme, as it became clear that the death toll of an uncontrolled virus would provoke massive outrage that could threaten the capitalist system itself. All this, compounded by an NHS devastated by a decade of austerity which meant it did not have the capacity to deal with the crisis.
Still a bosses’ government
While the party of government may have changed, the nature of the state has not. Keir Starmer’s New Labour Mark II, fully committed to defending decaying British capitalism, is still serving the interests of the bosses and trying to make us pay for the economic and social toll of the pandemic and other crises. Starmer is more than happy to increase arms spending while trying to cut benefits for the most vulnerable in society.
The Covid pandemic revealed the plain truth about society: it’s the workers who keep society running. Supermarket staff, nurses, bin workers and many more. The government hailed us as key workers, then told us we didn’t deserve a pay rise. But this experience led to the 2022-23 strike wave, which was just a small taste of our potential collective power as the working class in action. It also revealed another truth: you can’t control what you don’t own. We can’t rely on the bosses’ politicians to work for us, we need a mass party of the working class! More than five years after the start of the pandemic, the Socialist Party is playing a critical role in the fight to build such a party. If you agree, join us!
