the times | Wednesday June 8 2022 27
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Buy prints or signed copies of Times cartoons from our Print Gallery at timescartoons.co.uk or call 020 7711 7826Who can lead us out of this age of anxiety?
The nation is mentally and emotionally exhausted after years of strife so we need a calmer way of navigating our troubles
everything happening on the
political and global scale but you
need to focus on what you can do
for yourself, your family and your
community day to day. It’s about
creating empathy, not enemies.”
Adults as well as children need to
eat properly, go to bed early, take
exercise and limit social media.
The most relaxed person I have
interviewed recently was Mya-Rose
Craig, the 20-year-old who started
bird watching when she was nine
days old and is the youngest
ornithologist to have seen more than
half the world’s 10,738 birds. She has
travelled across six continents with
her family while also campaigning
on the environment and setting up
nature camps for disadvantaged
children. Birding, she explains in her
new book Birdgirl, relaxes her and
keeps her off her iPhone. It’s the
LBJs, “little brown jobs”, she loves the
most, the plain, hardworking, reliable
wren, “with its tiny body, sticky-up
tail and strident, honest song”.
We need to promote calmer,
more disciplined, dutiful, even dull
politicians who can help us cope.
Getting through the next uncertain
year is going to require stamina and a
growing understanding that we need
to care for each other in this fractious
century. To end this age of anxiety,
we are going to need dependable,
decent and competent leadership. Is
that too much to ask?be there to reassure. The education
secretary, instead of sending inane
tweets to shore up his paltry leader,
would be focused on ending the
strikes in universities, revising the
exam system and looking into the
1.8 million children regularly
missing school. The health secretary
would be single-mindedly tackling
NHS waiting lists rather than
embarrassing himself defending
Boris Johnson. But they are all mired
in their own crisis, in permanentcampaign mode for a prime minister
they know isn’t up to the job.
It’s no coincidence that the few
Tory MPs who have retained a sense
of calm are often ex-army: Tom
Tugendhat, Ben Wallace and Johnny
Mercer have been taught how to lead
under pressure. But others need to get
a grip and remember there is more to
their role than selfishly saving their
seats. The opposition has a chance to
look the steady, reliable alternative
— more guide dog than big dog.
In the meantime, we’re going to
have to learn to manage without
them. The clinical psychologist
Frances Goodhart says: “It’s natural
to feel helpless and hopeless withthe demands on their attention. Sheryl
Sandberg put it most succinctly when
she said last week she was quitting
Facebook because she was too “tired”.
The pandemic has also left scars.
There are now two million people
with long Covid, and a terrifying
backlog for GP and hospital
appointments. The charity Maggie’s,
which offers free cancer support,
told me it is seeing “much higher
levels of anxiety and depression
exacerbated by late diagnosis and
delayed treatments”.
It’s easy to lie in bed compulsively
doom-scrolling and becoming
overwhelmed whether you are 14 on
TikTok looking at American school
children’s coffins and polar bears
dying, or 40 and alternating between
the latest on the government
debasing itself and pictures of
Mariupol being annihilated.
American studies show a link
between the amount of time people
spend dwelling online on bad news
stories and the rise in post-traumatic
stress disorder. No wonder the
number of anti-anxiety prescriptions
has doubled since 2008 and
children’s mental health services
have two-year waiting lists. Too
many are on edge, alert to the next
potential disaster between weight-loss
ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Adults and children are struggling
to learn how to manage their fears.
Ideally, of course, ministers wouldI’
m not sure how much longer
this country can deal with
these levels of anxiety.
Everyone appears exhausted
after five years of Brexit,
Covid, the cost of living crisis,
culture wars and political chaos. Our
adrenaline levels are through the
roof. The country is beginning to feel
like four-year-old Prince Louis after
hours of jubilee celebrations and
sugar rushes: frazzled and mildly
hysterical, but with increasingly few
grown-ups to calm us down.
We desperately need a rest but
that looks a forlorn hope. Even the
idea of a holiday stirs panic. It’s not
only 180p-a-litre petrol or snaking
queues at the airport, cancelled
flights, delayed passports or hours
spent queueing at immigration
control, there’s the cost of this
winter’s heating to factor in before
most people can book a break.
Almost everyone still has a reason
to be worried even though we are
through the worst of the pandemic.
Commuters must contend with a
summer of Tube and train strikes,
families are struggling with childcare
costs, the young with rents, the
elderly with shopping bills, service
industries with increasingly irate
clients and customers. A record
822,000 people were suffering from
work-related stress or depression last
year, according to the UK Health
and Safety Executive.
Children are particularly vulnerable
both to adult moods and their own
anxieties. Pupils and teachers must
learn how to take exams again.
Students are still contending with
strikes; many have had three years
of expensive, broken study. One
tearful student I met this week has
spent a year on her dissertation only
to be told it won’t be marked and
she won’t be given her degree yet.Women (including the Waitrose
woman the prime minister is
desperate to woo) are often bearing
the brunt. For the first time in four
decades the number of young women
not working in order to look after
family has started to rise, according
to the campaigning organisation
Pregnant Then Screwed. Older
women aren’t returning to the
workplace either, unable to balance allQueues and delays
mean even the idea of
a holiday stirs panic
With the government
mired in crisis, the big
problems go unfixed
Alice
Thomson@alicettimes