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

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.

[email protected]

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

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