Post-Brexit Pandemic Britain: Patriotism Is the Last Refuge of a Scandalous Government
By Nesrine Malik
19 Oct 2020
Consider
this rule of thumb: the more that “patriotism” is invoked by a country’s
political elites, the less healthy its political culture will be. From
McCarthyism in the US to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the imperative to
love one’s country has often been used as a pretext for persecution and
submission. And in post-Brexit pandemic Britain, we have developed our own
grammar of patriotic intimidation.
‘A
party that governs in the national interest does not hand out large untendered
contracts to the private sector, or barricade itself against the north of the
country.’ Photograph: Aaron Chown/PA
-----
The
Conservative government is well positioned to play this game. It is already
high on the fumes of Brexit, which carried the Tories to a majority that would
allow them to vanquish Europe, take back control and get the job done. The Vote
Leave veterans in No 10 are already aware of how well the language of treachery
and sabotage can turn a section of the public against its own judiciary and
even elected representatives. The kind of war talk that helped secure Brexit is
now proving useful in managing the government’s calamitous Covid strategy.
Among the
government’s many gambits for deflecting blame – in between the lies,
scapegoating and occasional snarls of menace when questioned too closely – a
sinister implication has begun to linger. It whispers: why don’t our critics
love this country? Challenges to the government’s inept management of the crisis
are depicted as nasty efforts to “politicise” the pandemic; worried northern
mayors and MPs are “taking advantage” of a difficult situation to “score
political points”. Public behaviour that obeys government instruction is a
duty. Going to the pub is not a pastime, but an exercising of Britons’
“patriotic best”. Boris Johnson compares Covid-19 to all the other “alien
invaders” that this country has “seen off” over a thousand years – positioning
critique of his public health strategy as a traitorous undermining of a wartime
government. Any criticism of the failing privatised test and trace programme
has been hastily recast as an unpatriotic attack on “our NHS”.
Cabinet
ministers are increasingly reaching for sanctimonious bluster when put on the
spot. Matt Hancock, in a slightly embarrassing fit of fake indignation,
responded to a very reasonable and, in the circumstances, restrained query from
the Labour MP for Slough, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, about availability of testing
by saying: “I will not have this divisive language. I simply won’t have it!”
When cornered, scuttling to the moral high ground with pious talk of “national
unity” is always an easy way out.
This shimmy
is clumsy and transparent, but it can be crudely effective. If there is one
thing Keir Starmer wants to avoid, it is the perception that he is capitalising
on the government’s mismanagement of the pandemic to burnish his credentials as
the new Labour leader. This is a reasonable concern, especially for an
opposition leader determined to present himself as a grownup who will look
after “the national interest”. Starmer is keen to stress that he is “supporting
the government” whenever he can. He reassures the government that he is on its
side – “but …”
This
strategy has its limits, as seen by the quip from one Gogglebox family that
they have devised a new drinking game – down a shot every time the leader of
the opposition says that he supports the government.
Johnson has
picked up on this frequency and is playing with it, trying to discredit Labour
whenever Starmer does get oppositional, charging him with inconsistency. It’s
at moments like this – when Johnson taunts Starmer to return to his “previous
script” and to stop “knocking the confidence of the country”, when he accuses
him of having “more briefs than Calvin Klein” – that the hapless prime minister
recovers a bit of his old bullying swagger. This is the trouble with trying to
perform constructive opposition to a government that has no scruples and no
answers for its own failure. It will always take your helping hand and use it
to slap you. After months of restraint, you will still be called “a shameless
opportunist playing political games in the middle of a global pandemic”. You
will still be asked, by politicians and media alike, to work with the
government, to help it come up with better coping mechanisms, as if the
government did not have a huge majority and a long summer to correct its
springtime mistakes.
This is why
the Labour party’s attempted rebrand as a party of patriotism is another gift
to the Conservatives. Patriotism – and here I mean its weaponised political
deployment – is Tory ground, because they will always weaponise it more
lethally. Labour interlopers on this turf are only permitted if they sign up to
the right’s terms and conditions: never criticise a patriotic government, never
defend the human rights of immigrants, never “side with our enemies” in
Brussels, even if that puts the interests of your own citizens at risk. And on
that ground of submission or sedition you will be stuck, because you can never
outmanoeuvre the right on its own turf.
It doesn’t
have to be that way. What has passed for patriotism for too long in this
country is, in fact, chauvinism: an attitude that defines itself by who it
excludes, rather than who it brings together. It is a bullying sect that is
devoid of love, of affection, or kindness to fellow citizens. It is, as Oscar
Wilde is said to have remarked, “the most insincere form of self-conceit”.
Holding
this government to account requires a different approach to the question of
patriotism. Sometimes loving your country involves kicking up a fuss. It means
taking control of the narrative and telling the uncomfortable truth about a
government that is letting its people down.
This is the
sort of love for our neighbours and communities that can be found in Marcus
Rashford’s work to feed hungry children, which has brought the 22-year-old
footballer endless personal attacks and a rebuff from No 10 – it is not for
schools to regularly feed children during a pandemic, they say, let them
survive on universal credit. That sort of love can be found in a passionate
advocacy for a nation bereaved, heading into a second lockdown, whose new tiers
are both divisive and confusing. Succumbing to the false logic that demands
national consensus and “putting the country first” only prolongs the charade
that Johnson’s Conservatives are just trying their best – they only need a
little more help from the opposition to crack it! A party that governs in the
national interest does not hand out large untendered contracts to the private
sector, it does not refuse to devolve power to Labour administrations and
barricade itself against the north of the country. It’s not a lack of
camaraderie or a lack of resources that is failing the Tories. It’s their own
lack of patriotism. They are not here to govern; they are here to rule.
There is no
way of working with this government – either on the part of citizens or the
opposition – that will not simply give it more chances to shift the blame on to
others, who will be accused of not helping “enough”, of not keeping quiet. If
you love your country, it’s time to get loud.
-----
Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist
Original Headline: 'Patriotism' is the last
refuge of a scandalous government'
Source: The Guardian, UK
New
Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism