Appeasement is not a policy that works with the far-right. History taught us that. How many times have we got to learn it again?

Posted on January 2 2022

This is a headline from The Telegraph yesterday:

There is every reason to think that the editors got to the actual article between it being submitted and publication. Paul Nuki, its author, is considerably more pessimistic on Twitter:

The Telegraph gets it. It's likely that Johnson has got this stage of the pandemic wrong, yet again. He should have acted two weeks ago, when I wrote this:

Johnson did not act. He 'saved' Christmas instead.

He is not acting now. He's 'saving' education instead.

Sunak has not acted. He's 'saving' the Treasury's money instead.

And we face the most massive immediate crisis as a result. There is evidence that one in ten people who get omicron many get long Covid, with massive consequences.

These people are saving nothing. Polls, thankfully, suggest that they are not even saving their own political futures.

In the meantime, many people will suffer wholly unnecessarily to appease the idiots on the right-wing of the Conservative party.

Brexit was meant to pacify them. It didn't.

Now Covid inaction is meant to pacify them. It won't.

And we can have no doubt that climate inaction will be designed to pacify them too. And that will not work either. Destruction is their aim.

Appeasement is not a policy that works with the far-right. History taught us that. How many times have we got to learn it again? We need to do so. When it comes to climate it would be too late if we did it again.

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24 Responses

  1. joe says:
    January 2 2022 at 10:18 am

    You may be right although public opinion remains against lockdowns. The majority believe this is now a flu/cold and we should get on with it..I don’t think it is a left v right issue at all

    • Marco Fante says:
      January 3 2022 at 1:33 am

      This whole tendency of believing “this is now a flu/cold” is little more than another example of people believing what they want to believe.

      Trying finding someone that’s objectively going on science and evidence, for better or worse. You’ll find a few, not many.

      • Richard Murphy says:
        January 3 2022 at 7:53 am

        For some this is no big deal

        Flu and colds don’t crash the NHS though

        The inability to understand beyond personal experience and the ability to hear selectively is staggering

  2. Andrew Broadbent says:
    January 2 2022 at 10:44 am

    Even more worrying: Wes Streeting Labour Shadow Health Secretary seems already in appeasment mode on BBC R4 this morning. Apparently happy to follow the government and let millions of under 11’s go unvaccinated, ( over 1000 children going to hospital ) and hundreds of thousands in the population getting infected – with maybe thousands suffering the unkown long term dangers of Long Covid. All he asked for was more testing.
    The small point as to whether Govt are installing 7,000 air purifiers (which seems the case) or 300,000 (which are needed) in schools left hanging by the BBC.
    No mention of the thousands dying.

  3. Pilgrim slight Return says:
    January 2 2022 at 10:58 am

    I’ve been saying the same for a number of years about the Right. They always want more although they have everything already.

    I’m struck how increasingly we have tolerated leadership in all levels of public service that emphasises the short term over the long term. Probably related unfortunately to the career and life cycle based on get in, get the job, the pay and the pension and then ‘eff off as soon as you can having done the minimum to survive. Leave a mess behind; don’t innovate or challenge. Go a long to get along.

    Other than some sort of epiphany, we know what the answer is and some of us are paying for it already (they are now in prison for highlighting global warming).

    As for the health service, the deranged ‘customer service’ ethos that has been inserted into public services has only created a hyper-individualised patient who sees the service through a narrow band of their own need (to be expected when one is in pain, in fear etc., and being exploited by the Right whose MO is always exploitation) and therefore open to the messaging that will come after Covid (‘after Covid’? Will there be an ‘after Covid’)? that (well) the health service is crap and needs more money so you’ll have to pay. It Chomsky’s ‘Manufacturing Consent’ through and through in my view.

    There are answers to this, not least in an effective HM opposition. But there are more unpalatable solutions too that we’ve seen in populations like South America. Some political scientists like David Runciman (How Democracy Ends, 2018) think that the West is still too comfortable, too wealthy for proper insurrection and revolution. Is he right? Or have things just not got bad enough yet?

    We’ve been talking about Netflix recently haven’t we and I watched a documentary called ‘Last Man in Aleppo’ about the White Helmets Syrian Civil Defence Force. It’s a film that bears heart-wrenching witness to dead young infants being plucked out of bombed and collapsed buildings in the city of Aleppo like rag dolls and a fair number of body parts thrown in for good measure.

    This is the world we are living in. It’s not pretty and totally disgusting. How can one believe in God and expect not to be punished for acts like that? I’ve also read over the Xmas break Janine di Giovanni’s ‘The Vanishing’ about the decline of Christian communities in the Middle East. Not only is it an eye-opener (yes – the Christians DO live in these lands where Jesus roamed and why else would it be the case?) but it reveals a shocking decline in their fortunes for one reason or another.

    It reveals a world driven by factionism – between religions and within religions and exploited for political ends by of course politicians with agendas both locally, regionally and internationally.

    The old biblical story about the Tower of Babel? I mean, is anyone listening anymore? Clearly the moral of the story serves as a warning to man about allowing oneself to be divided and ceasing to talk to each other.

    Yet this is what vested interests do whether it is BREXIT, the future of the NHS or in the Middle East or elsewhere.

  4. Bertie the bear says:
    January 2 2022 at 4:44 pm

    There is evidence that one in ten people who get omicron many get long Covid, with massive consequences.‘

    Can you link to that evidence please? Thank you.

  5. Bertie the bear says:
    January 2 2022 at 8:22 pm

    So just the usual unsubstantiated claims? I thought it might be.

    I thought maybe one of your resolutions for 2022 might be to actually substantiate some of your claims, rather than just continue to make things up.

    That is what a ‘proper academic’ would do.

    At least your supporters on here will blindly accept everything and anything you say, and you can censor those with different views (based on actual facts).

    • Richard Murphy says:
      January 3 2022 at 7:58 am

      As others have shown, the evidence was readily available

      Where is yours?

      • Bertie the bear says:
        January 3 2022 at 12:27 pm

        None of the above relates to Omicron variant, as you claimed. Indeed the majority of the reports were written before the Omicron version was even discovered.

      • Richard Murphy says:
        January 3 2022 at 2:22 pm

        And reports indicate it will be worse because of its T cell impact

        Again, read Independent Sage members

        You are simply denying the truth

      • John S Warren says:
        January 4 2022 at 9:20 am

        I confess I think ‘Bertie the bear’ was wearing his/her troll membership card on his/her forehead. It wasn’t exactly subtle. I am at a loss to understand why anyone would diligently feed an anonymous troll with genuine information, or candidly Richard why you posted it. Any editor of a publication is entitled to dump trash, without publishing it.

      • Richard Murphy says:
        January 4 2022 at 9:35 am

        Sometimes it is good to see what these people do

        The you might understand them better

    • Marco Fante says:
      January 4 2022 at 1:22 am

      LOLZ. All seven of the links that I posted above were directly related to the Omicron variant, most are from December 2021 and all cite scientific reports and/or contain links to scientific evidence. At least two are directly authored by scientists. Much of which should be clearly apparent to you just by looking at the links without even clicking on them.

      You a funny guy, Bertie.

  6. Janet Foley says:
    January 3 2022 at 6:19 am

    I also ran across the one-in-ten statement regarding long Covid …it came from Dr Andrew Fauci. He has been on top of this virus situation since it started, and is hated by Trumpie right-wingers in the USA, for sure.

    https://www.msn.com/en-in/news/world/long-covid-still-a-risk-with-omicron-despite-mild-illness-dr-anthony-fauci/ar-AASn2dL

  7. The country waits on the government’s gamble says:
    January 3 2022 at 8:29 am

    […] government has taken a massive gamble with Omicron. It may pay off. As I noted yesterday, even the Telegraph has its doubts that it […]

  8. Bertie the bear says:
    January 3 2022 at 12:31 pm

    Additionally, the number of those claiming to be suffering from ‘Long Covid’ and those actually showing identifiable symptoms appear yo be very different.

    https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/technicalarticleupdatedestimatesoftheprevalenceofpostacutesymptomsamongpeoplewithcoronaviruscovid19intheuk/26april2020to1august2021

    Given the significant apparent differences between the Omicron variant and earlier variants, extrapolating somewhat suspect statistics from the latter, and applying them to the former, has no scientific credibility.