It won’t be long until we have to pay for the Government’s strategy

‘It seemed easier to do what everyone else was doing rather than find a policy themselves’

People will accept a great deal of hardship if it is done to them quickly; but impose even a small hardship on them for any length of time and you will find that they swiftly turn against you. The Americans learned that in Vietnam, and the Government is learning that same lesson now. 

Time increases all burdens, and as the lockdowns continue people are increasingly becoming more and more fed up. Worse still is the incongruence between government policy and rhetoric; if a lockdown is so necessary to stop the spread of the virus, why does the Government keep the schools open? If lockdowns are so effective, why did we need to go into a second lockdown, surely the first one would have removed the threat? 

Like the USA in Vietnam, the Government threw themselves into a morass with no clear way out, no exit strategy. We still don’t know what will happen when we emerge into the world, or how we will even get there. There has been no clear plan, no thought put into long-term strategy, only an attempt to muddle through because it seemed easier to do what everyone else was doing rather than find a policy themselves. Watching Government briefings I half expected to see General Henri Navarre proclaiming a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ or Robert McNamara telling me ‘however you look at it, we’re better than we thought we’d be at this time’.

The Government can pretend everything will be alright for only so long, no matter how hard they try. Reality is the cruelest mistress you could ever have, she will always expose you eventually. 

When that happens we will all pay a price but I sometimes think we deserve it. We did, after all, elect the people who got us here in the first place.