The Sunday Times - UK (2021-11-28)

(EriveltonMoraes) #1

32 V2 The Sunday Times November 28, 2021


NEWS


A


new Covid nightmare scenario
is looming. The B.1.1.529 vari-
ant that emerged in southern
Africa, now named Omicron by
the World Health Organisation
(WHO), has made its entrance
in this country and appears to
be highly transmissible. Worry-
ingly, it could reduce the effectiveness of
vaccines.
The official response was rapid. Last
night the prime minister reintroduced
some moderate restrictions including the
wearing of masks in shops and on public
transport. The government, which has
been criticised for being slow in imposing
travel restrictions in the past, was swift to
put six southern African countries on a
so-called red list.
More work and more data are needed
on what the WHO describes as a “variant
of concern”, but it seems likely the risk
can be contained and that we are a long
way from returning to the ground zero of
March 2020. Professor Calum Semple, a
member of the government’s Scientific
Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage),
said in a BBC interview yesterday that
people were “hugely overstating the
situation” and that vaccines were likely to
be effective in preventing serious illness
among those infected by the new variant.
That is reassuring, and we can con-
tinue to hope, as government scientific
advisers suggest, that the progress made
in fighting Covid-19 remains secure and a
return to tough restrictions in this
country is unlikely. That can only be a
good thing. People continue to suffer from
lockdown fatigue and there are serious
questions about the public’s willingness
to comply with new limitations.
Even so, the Omicron scare — let us
hope it is just a scare — reminds us of our
vulnerability. It has already inflicted fur-
ther damage on a travel industry strug-
gling to get back on its feet. It was not just
overexcited stock market traders whose
spirits fell when reports emerged of the
new variant.
This is why we should remember that
one of the basic tenets of a global pan-
demic, that nobody is safe until every-
body is safe, is not just a slogan. Western
countries have engaged in much self-
congratulation about how their scientists
stepped up and developed vaccines in
record time, compressing the usual

10-year timetable into a year. We should
indeed praise the scientists and the phar-
maceutical firms that worked with them.
But global distribution of vaccines has
been done in a way that makes the emer-
gence of new variants inevitable and
delays the return to normal life. In the
southern African countries in which Omi-
cron emerged, the vast majority of people
are unvaccinated.
The former prime minister Gordon
Brown, who has made it his business to
speak out on important issues, highlights
this. “Despite the repeated warnings of
health leaders, our failure to put vaccines
into the arms of people in the developing
world is now coming back to haunt us,” he
wrote yesterday. “We were forewarned —
and yet here we are. In the absence of
mass vaccination, Covid is not only
spreading uninhibited among unpro-
tected people but is mutating, with new
variants emerging out of the poorest
countries and now threatening to unleash
themselves on even fully vaccinated
people in the richest countries of the
world.”
Mr Brown, who is a WHO ambassador
for global heath financing, is right, and is
backed by experts such as Professor
Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford vacci-
nes group. Rich countries are falling well
short of the vaccine pledges they made,
including at the G7 summit in Cornwall in
June, when western leaders pledged an
additional 870 million doses, bringing the
total promised to two billion.
So far Covax, the global distribution
agency, has managed to distribute only
537 million vaccines, well short of the
many billions needed, and coverage in
many poorer countries remains very low.
There is no denying vaccine hesitancy in
some poor countries is widespread (as it is
in some richer countries), but the primary
problem is one of availability.
That has to change. By the end of this
year more than 12 billion vaccine doses
will have been manufactured, rising to
24 billion by the middle of next year. Mr
Brown estimates there are 500 million
unused vaccines in the richest countries
at present and that this will rise to 850 mil-
lion by February. They cannot be allowed
to go to waste. It is in our enlightened self-
interest to prevent it. The world needs this
shot in the arm, literally. We must provide
it.

This is an important moment, for today
we launch our Christmas appeal, in con-
junction with The Times. This year we are
supporting three charities: the Refugee
Councils of Britain, which helps people
fleeing conflict zones to build new lives;
Outward Bound, which takes youngsters
from disadvantaged backgrounds into the
wilderness to discover resilience; and the
Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT),
which restores UK wetlands that protect
against flooding and boost biodiversity.
The Refugee Council was founded in
1951 in response to millions of refugees
displaced by the Second World War.
Today, over 400 volunteers help more
than 20,000 people annually as they seek
to become productive members of society
by learning English and finding work, a
home and an education. Our reporters
have heard inspiring, uplifting and mov-
ing stories: from Afghans who fled the Tal-
iban this summer to Syrian women run-

ning an Aberystwyth supper club and
Iraqi tailors in Yorkshire making PPE.
The council’s work has rarely been as
vital. The tragedy of the 27 people who
drowned in the Channel brought the issue
into sharp focus. We can condemn crimi-
nal traffickers profiting from desperation
and politicians playing games but show
compassion to those seeking refuge, as
the UK has always done. The Refugee
Council helps make that happen.
Last year readers broke records, rais-
ing £3.22 million. We have high hopes this
Christmas too. Donations to Outward
Bound will be doubled up to £300,000 by
Barratt Homes, and donations to the
WWT by up to £115,000 by other partners.
In a year when Afghanistan fell into chaos,
British children suffered lockdowns and
closed schools and climate change was
hard to ignore, we urge you to give gener-
ously at thetimes.co.uk/christmasappeal
or by phoning 0151 284 2336.

Three charities that urgently


need your help this Christmas


A quick internet search for the phrase
“hot mama” leads to a Seattle pizzeria, a
Romanian maternity store, a French oven
cleaner and an Italian restaurant in Leam-
ington Spa.
It is a common enough term, even in
this hypersensitive age, yet it derailed the
career of Peter Huffam, who taught a grad-
uate diploma in fashion at the University
of the Arts London (UAL) until his suspen-
sion two years ago. An anonymous group
of his students complained he had “sexu-

alised” his classes by using such phrases
as “hot mama” and “racy décolletage”
while discussing Milan fashion week.
We report today that UAL has apolo-
gised for wrongly disciplining Huffam,
but we have to wonder about the fashion
students who claimed to feel “uncomfort-
able” about references to hot and racy
clothing. Perhaps they should take up
mechanical engineering instead. Or heed
the words of the late Karl Lagerfeld:
“Don’t get carried away. It’s only dresses.”

Fashion censored


Dominic Lawson


Teenagers are so touchy that parents cannot talk to them like adults


Our public knows which party and which
party alone is responsible for all the decisions,
for good or ill, taken on their behalf. And if
Johnson is deemed by sufficient numbers of
voters to be a blithering idiot, come the next
general election, they will be able to kick him
out of Downing Street (if he hasn’t already been
defenestrated by his colleagues, in the way
they did that other election-winner, Margaret
Thatcher). The problem with Continental-style
coalition government, aside from the
ponderousness and opacity of the political
decision-making process, is that there is not
such a clear line of accountability.
This may suit politicians ( just as it does
bureaucrats). But voters like to know exactly
whom to blame when things go wrong — and
then to be able to remove them from office
definitively.
Recently, in an interview with the New
European, the former Conservative chancellor
Ken Clarke put the case against the British way
in terms of how it accords peculiar power to
the victor under the first-past-the-post,
constituency-based system. He said that under
Johnson “we are now getting close to...
elected dictatorship”. If that were truly the
case, the PM would have succeeded in his plan
to end the way the conduct of MPs is invigilated
by the parliamentary standards commissioner,
Kathryn Stone. He wanted to cast her out — and
was humiliated in that attempt, even though he
briefly managed to corral his parliamentary
majority behind it.
It was the Labour chairman of the Commons
standards committee, Chris Bryant, whose
lethally measured admonition of Johnson was
most responsible for the PM’s reverse ferret.
Last week that won Bryant a prize at The
Spectator’s Parliamentarian of the Year
awards. I can’t have been the only person at the
event to have been moved by Bryant’s
acceptance remarks — coming in the wake of
Sir David Amess’s murder during a
constituency surgery — that Britain remains the
best place in the world in part because of that
special bond between each elected MP and the
constituency he or she, uniquely, represents.
You just don’t get that in proportional
representation systems, which rely on party
lists of candidates: a joy for behind-the-scenes
fixers; not so much for voters who seek true
accountability. It’s somewhat analogous to the
way we have an adversarial, jury-based justice
system rather than the more judge-dominated
one of continental Europe. Ours may
occasionally produce perverse results. But it
has stood the test of time, and of consent.
dominic.lawson@sunday-times.co.uk

T


hat was quick. It took only two
months, after the general election in
September, for Germany to establish a
new government, a “traffic light
coalition” comprising the Social
Democrats, the Greens and the Free
Democrats (FDP). I’m serious: the
emulsification process was less
intractable than many expected, especially as it
required a document of no fewer than 178
pages to explain to the German public the basis
of the agreement.
We’ll see how stable it turns out to be — in
particular, how the high-tax, high-spending
Greens get on in government with the FDP,
perennial advocates of low tax and minimal
public debt.
Meanwhile, in Sweden last week the
country’s first female prime minister,
Magdalena Andersson, quit after holding the
job for ... seven hours. Andersson had not
even had time to be sworn in before she
resigned when one of her supposed allies, the
Centre Party, refused to back her budget
because she had also relied on support from
the Left Party. Then three right-wing parties
pushed through their own budget. This caused
another of Andersson’s coalition partners, the
Greens, to walk out, arguing that they couldn’t
back a budget drawn up by right-wing
populists. Confused? At least Andersson was
able to laugh when a Finnish television
reporter asked her: “Excuse me, Sweden, but
what actually happened?”
Anyway, she may be back for a second go at
the job this week: that would be the latest
instalment of a parliamentary drama stemming
from the indecisive general election of 2018.
It’s nothing compared with the chaos in Israel,
where the Knesset finally managed this month
to pass a national budget after three years of
deadlock. The bill was passed at 5.30am, by a
margin of two votes, and, to quote one
account, “exhausted lawmakers whooped and
hugged” with relief.
These are some of the consequences of
proportional representation, arguably a fairer
system than our own first-past-the-post
method of determining the results of
parliamentary elections. Israel has perhaps the
purest proportional method of any nation, but
it gives disproportionate influence to small
parties such as those representing the ultra-
Orthodox communities, as they can hold the
balance of power.
In Israel, which has endured four indecisive
general elections in 2½ years, some look
longingly at the British system. As one of them
put it, what the country needs is “a system that

increases accountability and stability, even at
the cost of a decrease in representation for
minority viewpoints. The current electoral
system empowers small parties that represent
the poles of the Israeli political spectrum and
undermines Israel’s moderate, pragmatic
majority.”
Yet in Britain, at least among those who
seem to regard the Brexit-led ascent of Boris
Johnson to the job of prime minister as a failure
of democracy, there is a resentment against the
system that made this possible. The Liberal
Democrat MP Wendy Chamberlain has even
declared that our voting method is a cause of
excessive Covid deaths: “Countries like
Germany or New Zealand — countries that have
far more proportional voting systems — have
avoided the terrible death tolls we have seen in
the UK.”
The Lib Dems have a vested interest in a
similar system, as it could guarantee them a
near-perpetual share of government. In fact
they made a referendum on a change to the
electoral process a condition of joining the
Conservatives in a remarkably rare coalition
(for the British) after the election of 2010. Alas
for the Lib Dems, that referendum in 2011
resulted in over two thirds of those who
bothered to vote casting their ballot in favour
of retaining our ancient system.
On Chamberlain’s specific point that our
electoral system had caused our Covid death
toll to be higher, with the implication that Lib
Dem influence in government would somehow
have reduced it, let’s just recall that her party
leader, Sir Ed Davey, ridiculed the decision to
“go it alone” on vaccine procurement, outside
the EU system. Yet the main reason the UK has
dropped to 26th in the international league of
most Covid deaths per capita, from a
lamentable position of fourth in January 2021,
is that the “Brexity” path of unilateral vaccine
procurement chosen by the PM, with no cross-
party consensus, led to getting the stuff into the
public’s arms more quickly than in any other
European nation.

W


hen I was growing up, the
kitchen table was a place of
frequent and sometimes shouty
political and cultural debate. I
would acquire an opinion,
usually from something I’d read
or watched but sometimes from
someone I thought was cool, and
then I would express it, often with half an eye
to provocation, in the self-important teenage
manner. I didn’t have the sort of parents who
smile vaguely and say, “That’s nice, dear”, so I
would be expected to explain why my opinion
was my opinion and to defend it as it was
dismantled and sometimes demolished.
I did occasionally go off to my room in a huff,
there to boil with fury at the great injustice of
not being given a standing ovation every time I
aired a view. But eight times out of ten the
conversation was lively and thought-
provoking, even enlightening (because I was a
child, and children know less than adults,
having lived less life). The conversations/
arguments were sometimes fiery, but because
I was treated as an intellectual equal, I didn’t
feel belittled. I found it intriguing and satisfying
to learn what the opposing point of view to
mine was on any given topic, and why it was
held. It taught me that people who hold
different opinions from yours can still be
clever, likeable and interesting; that they hold
their views just as dearly as you hold yours,
and that this is fine.
I was reminded of all this when reading
about Samantha Price, the head of Benenden,
a girls’ boarding school, and president of the
Girls’ Schools Association. She gave a speech at
its annual conference last week in which she
spoke up for young people. “What has really
struck me,” she said, “is that this so-called
woke generation are actually simply young
people who care about things: about causes,
about the planet, about people. It ultimately
comes down to something very simple: being
kind.” She added: “I am getting a little weary of
hearing the older generation say, ‘You can’t say

anything any more.’ The fact is that times have
changed, and we simply need to keep up with
them. Being woke actually just means being
awake to social justice.”
Actually, both things are true. Woke young
people are amazing. They do care about
important things in a laudable way and are
indeed awake to social justice. All that is great.
But you really can’t say anything any more. The
kitchen table scenario I describe above is now
often a fraught and tentative affair, involving
many eggshells and much tiptoeing. The
anxiety is all on the part of the parents. Even
the gentlest, most thoughtful and cotton-
woolly discussion can result in young people
feeling aggressed and disrespected. The
parent’s only permissible answer to, “The sky
is green,” is, “Yes, that’s right.” This is never
truer than in the context of gender, in which
expressing the previously uncontroversial view
that biology is real can instantly mark you out
as a bigot, a fascist or a phobe.
Sometimes, too, big, insulting, very loaded
accusations are chucked carelessly about by
the children. As a result, many parents of
teenagers I know — and by “many” I mean
“nearly all” — feel it’s just not worth the hassle
of having these conversations. And, as a result
of that, an awful lot of young people don’t
know how to argue their case when faced with
views that differ from their own. They are able
to air an opinion but not to defend it
objectively or intellectually at any level.

What to do? We’re raising a generation that
is hugely admirable in most respects but
doesn’t seem to know how to think properly.
Parents must gird their loins and persevere, I
think, in tiny, manageable increments. It is vital
for children to understand that disagreement is
not a personal attack, that holding a topic up to
the light is not sinister and that saying, “You’ve
just completely contradicted yourself, darling,”
isn’t abusive.
I was amused to note Nadine Dorries’s
replies to Clive Efford at the culture select
committee last week. The Labour MP was
picking up the culture secretary on things she’d
tweeted in the past and asked her, “What is a
snowflake leftie?” “Probably my kids,” Dorries
replied. He tried again: “What is an Islington
leftie?” “Again, one of my kids.” And that’s
Nadine Dorries! Plenty of long-standing actual
snowflake Islington lefties also have children
who apparently consider them to be blinkered
throwbacks.
Price was right when she said that we all
need to evolve, that “times have changed and
we need to keep up with them”. There is much
to learn, and much of that learning is long
overdue. But evolution shouldn’t come at the
cost of a kind of accepted irrationality. Keeping
up with the times rarely involves throwing
everything you believe in and stand for in the
bin on the say-so of people who can’t argue
their way out of a paper bag and who are
governed by their own — or their friends’, or
social media’s — feelings. Respecting those
feelings is important, and so is engaging with
them, but it needs to work both ways.
I was struck by something the MP Chris
Bryant said at the time of Sir David Amess’s
murder. Amess, a practising Catholic, was
opposed to gay marriage and had voted against
it. Bryant, who is gay, recalled that, despite
their difference of opinion, Amess always
solicitously asked after Bryant’s husband. He
said that this gave you the measure of the man.
We need a bit more of that.
@IndiaKnight

India Knight


Our children are losing


the ability to argue


Messy Continental coalitions make our system look pleasingly transparent


Saying, ‘Darling, you


just contradicted


yourself,’ isn’t abusive


Some Israelis look


longingly at the


British system


It’s a world record: the


seven-hour government


Omicron is a stark reminder


that we need to jab the world


ESTABLISHED 1822
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