Don't look to the UK to set an example of "good governance"

 

On Thursday, Florida added 4,000 new cases of the COVID-19 and 47 new deaths, and has been leading the nation in daily new cases for the past few weeks. This is after Sean Hannity—having been “abandoned” by Donald Trump and falling behind Tucker Carlson in the ratings—expectorated out of all his sluices over Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis, “doing everything right” in regard to his pandemic response.  Last year Nate Monroe of The Florida Times-Union begged to differ during the first wave, arguing that DeSantis “has done his level best to undermine just about every common-sense effort by local governments to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus.” Two months ago the American Journal of Public Health accused DeSantis of not just botching the state’s coronavirus response, but claiming that the state had deliberately undercounted the number of cases and deaths. It found at that time that Florida had almost 5,000 excess deaths compared to previous years beyond that which were accounted for by the virus, and none of them were counted as COVID-related even though the virus was present in most of those cases, and had probably exacerbated previous conditions leading to premature death.

Politically-appointed “medical examiners” serving at the pleasure of DeSantis were responsible for these undercounts. The South Florida Sun Sentinel reported that one medical examiner, Dr. David Stewart, was especially eager to please DeSantis and was responsible for much of this undercount in the half-dozen counties in his jurisdiction. It was this deliberate effort to manipulate the true death numbers that state data scientist Rebekah Jones allegedly had been ordered to do on the state's official tracking website; she was fired for “insubordination,” and her home was raided by police. It is now being reported that she may not be all she claimed, but we are still expected to discount the AJPH findings, when we know that the numbers were manipulated at the behest of DeSantis for political reasons? DeSantis went well beyond what Trump was willing to do, and proves that while Trump was a relative amateur at manipulating facts for political advantage—his “facts” were clearly mostly lies—DeSantis is a professional at this sort of thing, and thus a much more dangerous creature.

In this country, fascist buffoons are a dime-a-dozen, all of them claiming to be the most “loyal” of Trump disciples. Few of them actually possess any natural “charisma” of their own, they just try to “prove” that their loyalty to the cult of Trump is just a little stronger than that of other cult members. DeSantis may be forced to prove his fealty to Trump when those criminal indictments come out of New York and Trump will likely have to be extradited from Florida. Will DeSantis refuse to honor an extradition order and harbor a wanted fugitive from the law?

This isn’t any way to run a country as large and diverse as the U.S., so why not learn a thing or two from the “mother country”—not Nazi Germany as Trump prefers, but the United Kingdom. After all, don’t they have more “experience” running not just their own country, but at one time practically half the world?

Unfortunately, what’s going on in the UK these days doesn’t exactly give one hope that either its government or its electorate can set a good example. Early on during the pandemic, it was hard to determine who was following who in their politicized and unprepared response—Trump or Boris Johnson, he of the unashamedly messy hair and tendency to treat serious issues with a lack of seriousness. The Conservative government was so entangled in the Brexit mess and anti-immigrant measures in 2019 that it ignored serious deficiencies with its healthcare and social welfare system, and was totally unprepared for what was to come. Johnson, apparently taking his cue from Trump, downplayed the pandemic and ignored WHO regulations, and when the pandemic struck in full force, the UK was in no position to tackle the problem without strong and determined leadership, which Johnson failed to provide. Today, the UK leads all Europe—including Russia—for the most COVID-19 deaths.

Faced with his massive mishandling of the pandemic, Johnson did what someone with autocratic tendencies does when he screws-up: finds scapegoats and abuses his authority so that his actions will not be questioned. He attempted to suspend parliament, and failing that, bypassed usual parliamentary procedure by issuing decrees and forcing through laws without proper vetting of their effects. Why he thought he could do this has something to do with a strange anomaly in the UK’s constitutional system: it has no actual “constitution” that most countries would recognize as such, but a mishmash of rules and procedures than can be changed or ignored on whim. Predictably, Johnson and his allies have spent much time making vicious attacks on the judiciary and the media questioning his actions, who insist on transparency and intentions.

And that isn’t all, far from it. In his Queens speech the other day, which is something like a “state of the union” address, Johnson decried crime, but as pointed out to him, his failure to prop-up the social welfare system during the pandemic was much to blame for it. Johnson was also accused of providing empty talking points about job creation after the double hit of the pandemic and Brexit, offering Trumpian superlatives in describing his Biden-lite infrastructure “plan.”

Johnson used the Brexit impasse to portray himself as a populist and “champion” of the people, while parliamentary authority to approve his actions was seen as being the “enemy” of the popular will, even though many, if not most, people in country had no clue what cutting off completely from the EU meant. Most economists believe that Brexit will have long-term adverse effects to the British economy, but nationalist fervor is stronger than common sense, as it is here in the U.S.

The Conservative Party in the UK is, however, much less radicalized than the Republican Party. It supports maintaining programs (such as the National Health Service) that the right in this country would consider “socialist.” It has survived in one name or another relatively unchanged for several centuries, generally taking power when the majority of the electorate feels under threat from forces it can’t control, and feel that a “strong hand” is necessary. The Conservative Party simply exists for such times, because unlike the Liberal Party, it has no real ideology or plan for governing: it simply blows with the current public whim. Brexit is a perfect example of this. Conservative prime minister David Cameron supported remaining in the EU, but after the Brexit vote, he resigned and his successors, Theresa May and Johnson, have supported it—not out of any actual belief that it was “good” for the country, but because it would be “unpopular” with the masses if they didn’t support it. That is certainly not the way the Republican Party operates; it couldn’t care less what the majority wants—they only hear the nutjob minority that shouts the loudest—ironically, Republicans no longer listen to the “silent majority.”

That is not to say that the Conservative Party does not have dangerous, reactionary elements. Racism and anti-immigrant sentiment was predictably the “guiding principle” behind Brexit, and white nationalism/grievance was predictably a part of the “traditionalism” of the Conservative Party. In 1968, in response to the Race Relations Act which made it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race or national origin, conservative PM Enoch Powell gave his “Rivers of Blood” speech,” in which he proclaimed

For these dangerous and divisive elements the legislation proposed in the Race Relations Bill is the very pabulum they need to flourish. Here is the means of showing that the immigrant communities can organize to consolidate their members, to agitate and campaign against their fellow citizens, and to overawe and dominate the rest with the legal weapons which the ignorant and the ill-informed have provided. As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding; like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”  That tragic and intractable phenomenon which we watch in horror on the other side of the Atlantic but which there is interwoven with the history and existence of the States itself, is coming upon us here by our own volition and our own neglect.

It is incredibly ironic that such voices do not recognize in themselves the element that is most “dangerous and divisive.” The Conservative Party has a history of promoting anti-immigrant policies, such as the “hostile environment” policy and the so-called “merit-based” immigration proposal.  The Windrush scandal was a culmination of racial fearmongering that led to the illegal attempt to deport thousands of British citizens simply because of the color of their skin, and no effort was made to determine their legal status. Johnson’s own racist comments in the past have been taken as “jokey” and “Johnson being Johnson,” but they also reveal a man totally lacking in sensitivity or even awareness of the import of his words. His Home Secretary, an Indian named Priti Patel, has been accused of promoting a “point system” for determining “merit” which uses algorithms that are deliberated skewed to benefit those like her, and discriminate against other groups.

The Conservative government has also passed a “freedom of speech” law that punishes universities for taking any action against students or teachers who are feel their “freedom of speech” rights have been violated, and allows them to seek compensation for these “violations.” Of course, what is really happening here is the further eroding of the UK’s toothless hate speech law. In fact this is just another “solution” in search of a “problem,” since there are almost no incidents in which a speaker was not permitted to speak. The real “problem” here is that this “freedom of speech” law now emboldens hateful and racist speech.

In this and other ways, Johnson and the Conservative Party have been taking a few pages out of the Republican Party playbook. Johnson has come under attack for his own voter suppression tactics. He is proposing a new voter ID law, which a few members of his own party admit is yet another “solution” in search of a “problem.” One-in-five British citizens of voting age currently have no form of picture ID, especially in poor and racially-diverse communities, and the bill makes little effort to “remedy” or provide provision to obtain a qualifying ID.

Thus the UK “example” doesn’t really work for this country. Boris Johnson may in some ways be more “likeable” and seem more “reasonable” than someone like Trump and his surrogates, but the truth is that Johnson and his party isn’t exactly “leading” by “example”—it is in many ways just following Trumpism.