OK, my blog is going political like me. For a bit. Another reflection on the (British) Conservative Party leadership contest, for which the prize is being leader of the Conservative Party, with the Prime Ministership thrown in.

Someone polled Conservative Party members (the electorate in this contest, now we’re down to two candidates) to find out what they would look for in their new leader. There were comments about character and general approach to the job of Prime Minister, mostly seeming very sensible to me and applicable to any party leader who might become PM. Then there was a widespread desire for a “return to traditional conservatism”. What really interested me was how this traditional conservatism was characterised. It seemed to be mainly about reducing the role of the state.

Problem: this isn’t traditional conservatism – not in Britain. Traditional British Conservatism is about:

• Patriotism (with a bit of narrow nationalism, but mildly expressed)
• Deference to social superiors and authority (especially royalty) and including the Church of England
• Valuing and rewarding outstanding and successful people (unless they were outstanding and successful opponents of conservatism)
• Defending tradition and established institutions (while not opposing gradual change)
• Admiring and supporting the family
• Protecting wealth, social distinction and existing advantages generally, while maintaining a balanced, or at least nuanced, approach to economic inequality (poverty was a bad thing, but rich people holding on to wealth was a good thing).

Hostility to the state (government power and scope) was not part of this. Conservative governments did not reverse major extensions of government action by the Liberal governments of 1868-74 and 1905-15. When in 1951 the Conservatives regained power after six years of massive extension of government action under Labour (the NHS, Town and Country Planning, nationalisation of the coal industry and so on) they denationalised the steel industry. Er, that’s it. Although Edward Heath in the late 1960s briefly talked about reducing the scope of the state, the first Conservative leader to make a major commitment to this was Margaret Thatcher, who came to power in 1979. She was serious. But government spending actually increased under her charge.

Making “rolling back the state” fundamental to conservatism isn’t traditional in Britain. It’s a quite recent American import.

Well, my satirical piece about an unnamed British Prime Minister and authoritarian legislation is now a bit dated. Boris Johnson is going, though not for having farted in a police station, and a leadership contest in his Conservative Party is underway. For non-Brits who may not be following this in detail: a leading contender is the recently resigned minister Rishi Sunak, whose super-rich wife avoids UK tax by having an address in a tax haven (“non-domiciled status”).

Heard in a pub last night:

“Well, this Rishi Sunak, his wife’s a non-docile.”

Recently someone in Essex birdwatching on a walk in his local area was stopped and warned by the police. Another birdwatcher asked the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner to clarify the situation. This was the reply.

“The Health Protection Act regulations that apply to the current lockdown does [sic] not include birdwatching as a reasonable excuse for a person to leave their home. Whilst walking is considered as exercise frequently stopping to view birds would make this activity a recreation as opposed to exercise.

I am aware that angling has been declared an exercise but I am unaware that the same has been done for birdwatching.”

So in other words, sitting still with a fishing rod is exercise, but walking around stopping from time to time to look at birds is not. On the whole, the philosophy seems to be that except for anglers, if you do anything you enjoy while exercising, it’s not exercise, but recreation. Next stop – joggers can’t have music systems plugged in because that’s attending a musical performance?

Enforcement of lockdown is essential to save lives, but I haven’t seen a police officer in a supermarket since the pandemic started and I don’t believe they’re visiting offices. Scientific evidence is that the vast majority of infections occur through sharing air with an infected person indoors.

The main fault, of course, lies with a government that produces vague and loosely-worded legislation; but as with any other law, police can use common sense.

On the plus side, I’ve had my first jab and it was all immaculately and courteously organised.

Obeying the Rules – whatever they are

My last post about Covid was philosophical. This one is political – not that this should be a huge leap.

Apologies to non-UK readers. This is about how the UK is handling the pandemic, and actually just one aspect. Rules about exercise.

The stated rules for our second lockdown say – STAY AT HOME except for a few things, including exercise in a public pen space IN YOUR LOCAL AREA. The local area is not defined. At one point it was “your quarter of your town or city”, which doesn’t help if you’re in a village. If “quarter” is taken literally – 25% – that means you could travel from Greenwich to Bromley, but not from one end of Manningtree or Accrington to the other. Or it may have that other common meaning of “neighbourhood” as in “the Chinese quarter of Newcastle”, which is about four streets and like many urban neighbourhoods, has no public open space to speak of.

It appears that people are being fined by the police in some areas for driving a few miles to exercise when they believed they were within the law. So the process seems to go like this:

1: Government makes a vague law which can’t be enforced without making it specific.

2: Government declines to clarify.

3: Police make their own decision – say, “up to five miles is OK, but no more”.

4: They don’t tell people what the rule is.

5: They catch people breaking it and fine them.

I’ve had good friends in the police; I’ve often in my work days worked well with police officers. One relative was a copper for most of his working life. But this is all just a bit like a police state.

OK, the main priority is to cut Covid deaths. For that, a second lockdown is probably the right measure and maybe should have come sooner. But are these rules helping? During the first lockdown, some police forces applied a rule which never had legal justification, that people could not drive at all to a place to exercise. Given that many people had dogs or restless children, but were scared to drive, they clustered in places on the edge of town. In my coastal town, there is only one. It was crowded. Bad for reducing transmission, surely? Then people realised the no-driving rule had been dropped and they spread out. Much easier to avoid getting too close. Now, though, people don’t know if even a four-mile journey might get them in trouble. Result: they’re clustering together again.

Stopping people going even a few miles would make sense if the virus was localised in a few pockets, but it isn’t and won’t be. That might have worked right at the start – not now.

I can be persuaded. But I’ve yet to hear why driving ten miles to exercise where few people are is more dangerous than driving one mile to where lots of people are.

As we approach a year locked into a pandemic, and as I give thanks for the safety of those closest to me, I think about how the changed world has affected me and what I can learn from my reactions.

As I said in my last post, I haven’t felt disoriented or puzzled or even helpless. An unwanted situation has happened, as they do, and I am not powerless because I can take sensible precautions by choice, take calculated small risks by choice when they seem worthwhile, and although my government is unlikely to listen to me or mine, I can help expose its mistakes and dishonesties. Compared to the experience of a world war starting, with your country a combatant, this dislocation is quite small. Moreover, it’s never seemed to me the most important thing happening – that’s the climate emergency and our inadequate response.

There are things I miss a lot: drinking, chatting and just watching the world go by in the pub (a bottle of beer at home is not a complete substitute, not by a long chalk); cancelled holidays; some birding day trips when (as now) lockdown is intense. There are even gains: the cats and I share one another’s company more, which suits us all. Most of these things can be replaced. What can’t – and what effect does it have?

I’m still in regular contact with friends, political allies and relatives. But we don’t meet face to face. That matters after a while, particularly in the political field. Meetings happen by Zoom. The business gets done, but all the informal contact, the taking someone aside after the meeting, the chat, much of which is also useful to the campaigning effort, is lost. You learn less about the people you’re working with. Human experience is narrowed.

I’ve got out birdwatching and on long walks as much as before, even if that involved a little rebellion in the first lockdown when police were making up the rules including some very silly ones. The birding is more local, but that’s OK. For a long time, though, out of caution and because other people were abstaining, I wasn’t delivering leaflets. Can you believe how glad I was when I felt I could go back to that? Why was this? I was doing something useful, yes, but also, I was getting out, seeing different sights, going to different places. The meetings, too: I might dislike driving to a meeting in heavy rain after dark, but it meant being in different places. Not being in different places so much, however much I visited places on the net, had a bigger effect than I expected and eventually, I did feel, not quite depressed, but unfulfilled, unchallenged.

So what does that mean for people who for reasons of health or anything else, in or out of pandemic, can’t get out? How much does that do to fuel mental decline?

People say to me, “We’re living in strange times”. True, but on the whole, I expect times to be strange. I’ve got a History degree. I read Science Fiction. In both, strange things happen. I’ve also got a lively interest in both emergency planning, and how people react in a crisis. The assumption that if something has never happened in your experience, it won’t happen, is horribly common and leads to a lot of bad decisions.

I’m not sure if that’s why I’ve been a bit scared, and bothered by things I want to do but can’t, but not disturbed or disoriented by the crisis. Of course, it makes a big difference that no-one I know has been hospitalised. But if they were, disoriented would be the last thing I’d be.

I get on with political planning tasks, with writing, with local birdwatching while maintaining social distance. I’m phoning people and getting phone calls. The cats are happy with things. I’m reading more – “New Scientist” and some books. I’m learning Italian – something I’d started as a project before lockdown, but I have more time for now.

Our government’s response is all over the place, but then I’d expect that. “New Scientist” mentions Chinese research that places of work were 100 times more dangerous than public transport; so the government makes face coverings on public transport compulsory and not at work. I did my big food shopping two days ago (now at 9 to 10 day intervals to reduce risk). None of the staff busying around (often coming close to customers) were wearing face-masks, though the checkout-people were.

OK, I’m not surprised – just disappointed.