[It needn't be the] Theatre of the Absurd

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It strikes me that the government is rapidly losing its audience in the tragicomic drama that is Covid-19. Not only its audience but its stage crew; with a rebellion building from the back benches [various posts, this blog passim] via the 1922 Committee. The Cabinet's vacillations between doing the right thing, on the one hand epidemiologically and on the other to assuage the concerns of those in business and their employees, now simply looks from the outside like rabbit-stuck-in-a-headlight territory. Rather than sticking with a plan for either and seeing the thing through until the vaccines are out there in the wild, they're stuck forever in a feedback loop of indecision, losing the faith of all sections of the theatre's audience simultaneously.

Trump has learned to his electoral cost the folly of theatre gone wrong; Johnson really needs to win over his own theatre before the catcalls start and the rotten tomatoes begin to rain down on his sorry cast from the stalls, circle and even from the private boxes of his own erstwhile supporters and co-conspirators. Meanwhile the rest of us wait for at least some consistency of message and direction from him and his Cabal Cabinet.

We can either take Trump's insane path into pandemic oblivion: currently, fifty Americans are dying every hour from the disease; [with poor old Biden's unenviable task to tackle all of this head-on as soon as the absurdist shadow-play of their transition period is over]; or we exercise extreme caution on the disease front and suck up the economic consequences until such time as it is actually realistic to restart the economy: this will require State and Central Bank co-operation, and interventions that for some will appear uncomfortably Socialist in nature.

I for one would welcome that scenario, at least in the short to medium term; we've already seen that Rishi Sunak has been willing to entertain the concept in quite positive terms, albeit being apparently reined back from time to time as the Government's stance wobbles yet again. So Boris, let's sort our collective health and welfare issues out first, before worrying about the cost; and most definitely without the loss of the livelihoods of those of us without your privilege, money and position. You owe us that much.

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