Regulation that is insensitive to local conditions quickly starts to feel sinister Credit: Andy Barton/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty
Boris Johnson’s sunshiny “one more heave, chaps, the cavalry are coming” Covid message doesn’t seem to be landing very well. Perhaps he presumed that, with all that good news on the vaccine front, everyone would simply accept the logic of pretty much staying locked down until it arrives.
But this sense of an ending doesn’t seem to have done much to shore up discipline. If anything, it seems to be going the other way: anti-lockdown protests this weekend led to over 150 arrests, people are moving around much more in lockdown 2 than lockdown 1, and the political rebellion among Conservative MPs has gathered, rather than lost, momentum since the vaccine news. It looks like keeping up restrictions is going to become more difficult, not easier, as the end comes into view.
You can see why Tory MPs are worried. The map of areas still stuck in ‘tier 3’ lockdown restrictions, with pubs and restaurants shut, has echoes of the most Brexit-voting parts of the country: a new ‘red wall’ stretching from Lancashire in the North West across to Lincolnshire and the Wash, with a separate pocket of red in the Thames estuary and Kent. These are the voters most precious to the Government — fear of getting on the wrong side of them runs deep.
The Covid tiers can't go soon enough
What’s more, the latest polls are not offering much reassurance. We’ve become used to surveys showing overwhelming support for more restrictions, leading to the general assumption that ‘lockdown sceptics’ are little more than a small but vocal group on social media; Nigel Farage’s attempt to launch a new political party on the back of that passion has so far fallen flat.
But on the post-lockdown tier system, opinion is more divided — of four options offered by YouGov, the most popular at 33% is the view that too many areas are now being held in top tiers. More disconcertingly for the Tories, the dissenting group rises to 37% of Brexit voters (compared to 28% of Remainers) and 44% of voters in the all-important Midlands (compared to just 21% of Londoners). The voters who propelled them into office are the least happy.
What Tory MPs know (and not only the 70-odd rebels lined up by Steven Baker and Sir Graham Brady) is that there’s something about this whole approach that goes directly against what they were elected to do. As Editor of the Sheffield Star, Nancy Fielder, told Andrew Marr on Sunday, Tory MPs in the North “were elected around Brexit, which was all about freedom — we want to be able to do what we want to do ourselves without being dictated to — and look where we are now.” Brexit was a rebellion against control from the centre, against remote regulations set by faraway people in Whitehall or Brussels who aren’t interested in the details of your area — the Covid tiers have an unhappy whiff of the same hauteur.
The aggravation doesn’t stem from people being selfish or from behavioural fatigue so much as from the bluntness of the regulation. Even among those who are concerned about the virus and keen to be responsible, rules that are arbitrary and insensitive to local conditions quickly start feeling pointless and sinister; from there it is a short step to them feeling tyrannical.
Notes of absurdity are even more potent at destroying support. Think of how much energy the Brexit movement got from reports of EU regulations on “bendy bananas” — today’s elaborate one-way systems around half-empty garden centres and tiny designer Perspex vizers covering only the chins of waiters in restaurants are surely the new equivalents. You can imagine the mixture of hilarity and fury in the Kent village that has been divided down the middle between two tiers, so one of its pubs has to close but the other can remain open.
At heart, the flaw in the system is the continued adherence to a one-size-fits-all approach. A “traffic light” system of regional tiers may sound targeted and human at a No 10 press conference, but it doesn’t feel that way to the millions of people lumped together in Manchester or Kent, or to the 99% of the population still forbidden from seeing anybody inside during an English winter. As each MP knows, within each constituency, let alone county, there is a variety of urban and rural areas, and a range of different demographics — it’s a whole world, not a dot on a map. This is the central shortcoming of the lockdown movement — that you can force everyone in a hugely varied society to behave in the same way, by diktat.
This was never true, and particularly not for a threat like Covid that is so unusually targeted at a certain subset of the population: we all know people who are more- or less- cautious about Covid and have been all along for perfectly good reasons. Wise regulation would acknowledge this reality, and provide principles that people can apply to their unique circumstances. The Government will win their vote in parliament, but the anger will start to subside only when we move beyond universal life-rules controlled by the centre. The principle of different advice for different groups is already established: the proposal to ‘protect the vulnerable’ in the Great Barrington Declaration may have been rejected on the grounds of practical difficulty, but different ‘shielding’ advice was given early on to the particularly vulnerable and ministers insist that as soon as the most vulnerable are vaccinated, restrictions can begin to ease.
The Covid tiers can't go soon enough
So as we move through this difficult winter, with the new promise of a sunset clause on the Tiers system, perhaps the Government needs to switch up its metaphors: instead of traffic lights, which are notoriously frustrating and treat everyone the same, it might be better to start thinking about traffic lanes, which when functioning well on a motorway are a remarkably effective way for society to move safely along together.
A nationwide traffic lane system would allow people to choose at an individual or household level how to live: amber means you carry on as now, respecting regulations to a normal degree, red means you are additionally cautious because either you or your regular contacts are highly vulnerable, and green means either you have decided that the risk of contracting Covid is acceptable to you and you are personally not worried, or that you are now immune via prior infection or vaccination. Information about local virus levels and your own risk profile can help you choose your lane, and you can quarantine between lanes (which is already what the Government recommends to students coming home for Christmas). As long as you aren’t a threat to others, everyone can decide for themselves.
Rather than attempting to micro-manage the entire public square as a single space, which is the source of so much unhappiness, individual venues and events could be allowed to cater to different risk levels. Care homes and hospitals will obviously continue to operate on ‘red lane’ principles with the highest care, but supermarkets and shops could return to the excellent system where the first hour of the day is reserved for ‘red lane’ customers. Which system would you prefer, as a vulnerable elderly person — to be forced in, as now, among the noisy young people being cavalier about masks and bumping into you, or to be able to know that the newly-cleaned shop was open at limited capacity only to people taking proper care?
Pubs and restaurants could start to operate similarly — red lane on one day, amber for most of the week and green on Fridays and Saturdays when young people and the increasing number of immune and vaccinated can do as they please without being accused of being selfish. Transport could work on similar rush-hour principles, and even schools would be safer than they are now with a class or stream reserved for students who had genuinely vulnerable people at home, rather than pretending all schoolchildren obey distancing guidelines when quite obviously they don’t. If a venue or service cannot be modified safely in this way, it can remain in the amber lane — no change.
A post-lockdown regime along these lines could provide a route for the whole UK to offer better protection to the vulnerable as discipline starts to collapse, while providing safe outlets for the people who will break the rules anyway to live their lives without censure. Most of all it would reacquaint people with the ability to make decisions for themselves, and move beyond the local colouring-in exercise that is causing so much political tension.
Thinking along these lines will become only more important as vaccines start to be administered: if people are frustrated now, imagine how they will feel if they or their loved ones have had the vaccine and are still being asked to lead a half-life of distancing and not seeing anyone for months afterwards. There must eventually be a mechanism to release the vaccinated and the less vulnerable, while providing proper support for people who need to continue avoiding exposure. The sooner it gets moving, the better.
Freddie Sayers is the Editor-in-Chief & CEO of UnHerd. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of YouGov, and founder of PoliticsHome.
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SubscribeThe author claims that “wars are never ended or resolved on the battlefield”.
Actually, they are, if allowed to continue long enough.
I would refer the author to episodes such as Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the career of Genghis Khan.
I would also suggest that without any outside intervention, or ‘international pressure’, Israel could end the war with Hamas on the battlefield too.
For better or worse, the West, which is typically the source of interventions designed to get all sides round a table, has no longer got the stomach to see wars settled on the battlefield, which is (a major reason IMO) why Africa in particular remains chronically unstable.
Had Europe’s various warring sides in centuries past been prevented by well-meaning Africans from redrawing their borders through war, and thus deciding their own histories and futures perhaps these brushfire wars and internecine blood-letting that Africa now suffers from would plague Europe.
I have no idea which of the current conflicts in Africa can be managed by well-meaning foreigners offering inducements to make peace, and which need to be allowed to burn themselves out naturally, but blanket statements that wars are never ended on the battlefield need to be called out as just plain wrong.
Your examples are fundamentally different from African violence since the conflict is tribal and triggered by battles over dwindling resources.
This is the face of climate change.
What follows will be countries in crisis with famines and starvation prompting mass migrations.
Get used to it, it’s here to stay.
Absurd. Africa is a resource-rich continent long mismanaged by people who have been given trillions in foreign aid and technology for decades. Climate has absolutely nothing to do with it. Human greed and stupidity is to blame.
Corruption is the word you are looking for, which is undoubtedly always part of the picture since it is embedded in African culture.
Resources come in many forms and are almost always at the root of tribal conflict, many of which span different boundaries to the colonial map.
If organisations truly wish to help they need to understand these aspects much better.
Africa is rapidly greening. The Sahara is shrinking. Turns out CO2 is really good for plants (shocker). Africa’s problem is corrupt, ineffective governance.
Good God, such barefaced lies are unbelievable. The Sahel is growing.
This nonsense it what stops real discussion of the problem.
It is likely that the biggest contributor to the spread of the Sahel is bad land management, over grazing and over population. Obviously corrupt politicians see global warming as an excuse to get handouts for themselves or to impose extra taxes on their people, like a carbon tax on fuel.
The spread of the mini-sahel in southern Africa has been well documented and studied since the 1930s. There is little mystery about the causes lying in the way people, local people, care for their land.
Ethiopia has make great strides in protecting water catchments by banning goats from higher lying areas. Kenya’s NGOs have led the way in using trees to regreen.
Please abandon the nonsense, the issues are too important.
This is also the face of overpopulation, as adequate resources — supply — lag demand. Africa could do its people — and countries accepting its surplus as immigrants — a great favor by addressing over-procreation.
If Africa truly wants to take the lead in solving African problems, as the article’s author says, great: Let it do so. If it does not, action, and inaction, have consequences.
Addendum: After letting this percolate for a few hours, I realize my comment may seem harsh and simplistic; perhaps it is. Issues facing this continent — those that are home grown, those arising from foreign involvements and those reflecting an unhappy merger — are many and complicated. Population reduction would no doubt help considerably along the lines of supply and demand, but I appreciate that solutions — and I truly hope Africans do lead — will be multifaceted.
“If it does not, action, and inaction, have consequences.”
Like mass migration and / or Rwanda style genocide.
I am putting my money on the former – both intra and intercontinental.
Since climate change is affecting everyone, but it’s only Africa, and to some extent the Islamic parts of the Middle East where there’s chronic armed conflict, it seems fair to infer that some cultures are dealing with it rather better than others.
Personally, and I’m not a fan of ascribing all of Africa’s ills to being the fault of increasingly historically-distant colonial powers, I do very much wonder whether the drawing of borders by those powers without respect for tribal boundaries is at least one reason for the chronic instability.
If that were the case, then the borders need to be redrawn, and that really only happens through one side driving the other side out. The kind of war, in other words, that is literally genocidal.I’m not advocating for this or against it. It’s acute pain now, or chronic pain forever. Just saying that there are types of conflict that can really only end on the battlefield, and for policy-makers and policy advocates to be claiming that wars are never won on a battlefield means blinding oneself to reality in certain situations, and consequent misguided and counter-productive policies and interventions.
The idea that tribally oriented warfare in Africa is predominantly caused by climate change is the biggest load of rubbish I’ve ever heard. I expect even you know that. It’s been going on for decades since when people were warning that a new Ice Age was upon us. Battle of resources possibly, but there are not “dwindling resources” in Africa, accepting the ultimate geological sense than the Earth is finite: however we have only scratched a tiny percentage of available resources. This absurd 1960s Club of Rome stuff has been utterly discredited since the 1960s, that we will “run out” of this or that material in the short term, which completely dismisses human ingenuity and technological progress.
Also your comment is a classic example of progressive liberalism: a cynical dismissal of the opportunities for human beings to actually do anything about their many problems (as has always been the case), dressed up as a faux piety and concern, with naturally a site swipe at your “white supremacist” enemies or whoever you think they may be, saying that they must suck it all up and we must import even more of Africa’s problems into the West! What a brilliant solution that is already proving to be.
Western pacifism of the past fifty years has bottled up many conflicts with only sporadic flareups of violence showing as signs of the built up pressure. Those conflicts will have to eventually come to their conclusions. It’s going to shock a whole lot of people who believed in the End of History fantasy
Africa may need the wests help, but has constantly claimed to not want it and denounced any western interference as being akin to modern day colonialism. They thought the grass was greener by getting into bed with the Chinese and Russians, I think they’re probably about to find out the hard way that it isn’t
Africans constantly say how evil racist and colonial we are – let them sort things out themselves. The best we can do to help them is don’t give them any technology they couldn’t develop produce and understand themselves. No more western medicines, computers, aircraft parts, cars – nothing. Let Africa go back to being Africa and the population will fall to its sustainable level.
Yeah, and while you’re at it the West could stop bleeding Africa of its natural resources like oil, copper, coltan, gold, diamonds, nickel, molybdenum, helium, etc.
How are we doing that exactly?
Africa isn’t a single entity. By definition, its hundreds of conflicts tell us there are hundreds of competing visions by hundreds of different peoples across hundreds of different territories.
When authors write “Africa needs the West’s help” they always fail to identify which political factions the West is supposed to help over others. Is the West meant to help existing corrupt incumbents transgressing human rights? Or is the West supposed to mediate between murderous insurgents transgressing human rights?
If the West is only slightly perceived by some Africans to favour one side, it would add anti-Western anti-colonial fuel to the fire we’re trying to extinguish. If the West mediates a mutually agreeable gain share between existing combatents, another insurgency group will be born to fight for its own mediation and gain share. And let’s not forget the queue of Western activists ready to take to the streets and the courts to protest any decision whatsoever.
There will always be agrieved peoples both in the West and in Africa. What determines the peace is the likelihood of fighting yielding concessions. In Western Europe, North America, and Japan, after centuries of internal and external wars, powerful states have emerged with a near monopoly of force. Western Europe and Japan were literally bombed into peace. There is no prospect in these regions of military force gaining any benefits for would be aggressors.
The hard truth is wars end by the imposition of a settlement by force, internally and externally. Any other peace is just a rest between fighting, a time for new opportunists to mobilise to fight for what they think is theirs. Western Europe and Japan were forced into peace when they ended up prized possessions of the American empire. Just this week the USA spent $60bn to defend its hegemony in Europe, and indirectly that keeps the peace in Western and Central Europe. Pax America.
Africa’s violence arises precisely because there is no greater power willing or able to impose peace at any cost. Like every other continent, it will suffer continuous civil and regional wars until some sort of hegemony is established. Sadly, for a continent so large, populous, diverse, and geographically contiguous, convergence on hegemony might never come.
Very thoughtful post.
Although I agree with a lot of your comments, I think the comparison of Africa with the situation of Western Europe and Japan after the Second World War is frankly ludicrous. I do realise that the concept of an American empire is ever so fashionable among many on the Right, and some are absolutely determined that almost every question should be dragged into some intra US culture war. But with the exception of the Philippines, Puerto Rico and a few others (and even Puerto Rico is largely self-governing) the key feature of American geopolitical hegemony is precisely that it did NOT impose a formal Empire, for example on Iraq or Afghanistan.
But a formal Empire is exactly what is needed IF a hegemon wants to transmit its values and dominate the societies in the way that the British Empire sometimes managed to. But this will be 100 or 200 year project, not one for a single presidential administration. (The world is complex: governments can behave both idealistically and cynically at the same time).
Despite the hiatus of the Second World War, Western Europe and Japan both had the institutions, experience and expertise to continue being self-governing prosperous societies and achieve largely achieved this, albeit with American security guarantees and a (rather benign) military presence. Africa is in an entirely different situation for deep historical reasons.
“Africans will take care of their own problems”.
So, how’s that going?
And always with somebody else’s money and weapons / expertise.
And this at a time when we apparently can’t defend our own borders or keep Jews safe on the streets of London.
Grow up.
Glad to see some much needed writing on Africa. The conclusion it reaches is utterly wrong however. The white man needs to stay as far away from the affairs of the continent as possible. Any suggestion to the contrary is neocolonialist madness.
We gave up any right to try and drag these benighted peoples into modernity decades ago when we gave up the Burden at the instigation of our American masters. We must leave Africans to resolve their own issues if they are to become effective, self-actualised nation states instead of corrupt tribal entities. Many countries have come far in recent years, and don’t get enough credit. It isn’t 2003.
“More anarchy awaits ….”
Change one letter and this could almost start a poem by Yeats, who is seeming more and more prophetic by the day. And it’s not just in Africa.
Very insightful.
Armed conflicts are on the rise everywhere not just in Africa, although it is understandable why non-Africans like to be concerned given the troubled history of the continent.
Africans have always solved their own problems when not interfered with from outside. It is no secret that peace in the DRC is elusive because of the meddling by foreign interests over minerals that are powering the digital (and AI) revolution.
Sorry, but Africans are incapable of solving Africa’s problems. How much more time and proof do you need to see this?
Wars are ended when your enemy is defeated, the ‘negotiations’ merely tie up the loose ends.
Witness WW2 .
The West just lectures about “democracy”, it’s cynical and useless. Law and order must come first, and must be organic. Wish them the best.
You can read the same old tired stuff about white guilt from colonialism, slavery, racism, or their counterpoints, mentioned here in some of the posts, about “Africans unable to solve their own problems”, “Africans remain violent unless a greater power is willing to impose peace” (a particularly ugly sentiment, IMO), or you can listen to people like Magratte Wade, here is a link where she is being interviewed by the shockingly casually dressed Jordan Peterson: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH63RABGK6w
Currently its a win – win for China and a not too shabby set up for the Russians too. If the countries are stable China gets the raw materials and if not sells them arms, Russia likewise but on a much smaller level. Russia also gets the bonus that war drives Africans to Benelux, Germany and Britain as refugees who are coming over on the basis they can behave as if they were still in Africa. Ironically the Chinese could do with this labour as their future demographics are dire – old and mostly male. They could also make things better for the migrants as in China you do as the Chinese do – or else. Those coming to Britain etc face a life of low wages, benefits and crime. Not values we associate with China over its long history.
Only silence on the way men like Daniel Gertler, Mark Thatcher, Beny Steinmetz and others like France, USA, UK along with their local warlords and dictators have been, and continue to, underwrite genocide in Africa while bleeding the country dry of natural resources for centuries. So now Russia and China are the culprits. At least they built infrastructure, and Russia hosts millions of refugees fleeing the predation and bombs of the United States. Economic capture by the IMF and WB haven’t helped out much either. Leaving out 80% of the history in Africa to endorse B.S. Gimme a break.
Africa could be great – but Africans choose for it not to be anything other than a malange of failed States.
It’s very interesting that the west is not doing what it normally does which is help regardless whether it’s asked to or not
The white western saviour is strong with this author. The predictable are then triggered in these comments to spout their trolling.
Africa really does need to sort itself out. Corruption is what western and eastern handouts facilitate. Just stop.
Take roads. EU aid involves handouts that are supposed to create road making skills, of course it goes to the politicians. No road. China brings in all its own people so at least a road gets built. But that is it, no maintenance.
This unrest is very worrying. Mozambique is next door to South Africa and the SA army cannot feed its own troops. Everything is stolen. Think a more incompetent version of the inept Nigerian forces. They at least hone their skills against civilians in the odd coup.
This article does a good service by identifying specific actors and their roles. It is tempting to generalize about Africa’s problems but the solutions will probably have to be narrowly targeted. Some governments seem hopelessly corrupt, but it would be good to know which ones are not.
It seems a little delusional to imagine that countries like the UK are in any way well placed to ‘help’ Africa. The reality is that the UK is looking more and more like Africa every year: a corrupt, self serving political elite (schooled in the very same institutions as many African leaders); crumbling infrastructure (schools falling down…); environmental degradation (rivers awash with sewage) and, above all, exploding inequality of wealth and opportunity (food banks, landlordism, inherited wealth as the only guarantee of a decent standard of living). Labour and the Tories being little more than two cheeks on the same bottom make our democracy look somewhat redundant. If this continues the UK will soon be on the same level as Nigeria.
Klive, well stated. One only has to look at our institutions eg “House of Lords”, an un-elected body, filled with party crony’s. They sit their for LIFE. Very Feudal in essence. Landlordism – Total. No reform on that will happen as most of the politicians are renting property out. No chance of them changing any laws. Great impartiality. Just Shamless and a absolute shameful cabal
Correction – it crossed the brink decades ago. Its own fault lines deepened both by outsider meddling and neglect led to wars then and now – coupled with loss of western influence. Enter China and Russia. Time for catch-up TV?
“Change and leadership must come from within Africa”, “Africa will take care of its own problems”. Beyond the cliches there are too many countries that coukd, or haven’t, for reasons that are as much endogenous, and often wholly inexcusable, as exogenous. Pointless and unjustified coups, delayed reforms and elections, pacts to stay in power by force backed by mercenaries and new autocracies. Many of the lessons have been rolled over from earlier decades. But The West is no longer soley culpable and Gulf States/China/Russia are quite prepared to back and sustain a new generation of corrupt and military leaders. “Africa” will not sort itself out until Agrican leaders stop messing around and immerating Afeicans as well.
This article is almost the quintessence of well-meaning but ineffectual liberalism, rimming with contradiction. “Africa must solve its own own problems” – but the West must also, natch, help no doubt by wasting yet more resources on this ill fortuned continent. Africa was certainly cynically carved up without any regard to the inhabitants and their customs in the 1890s, but it was just as cynically abandoned with no effective capability of ruling itself – as modern (artificial) states – in the 1960s, because of the demands of tiny group of self-interested political elites, and of course Western bien pensant liberals. The results have, mostly, been cataclysmic.
As we see from country after country democracy simply is not going to become rooted in Africa, in what are still overwhelmingly tribally-oriented societies. Even the smallest countries have dozens of languages.
It’s clearly a terrible situation for them but the fact is that the west is in crisis and hardly in a position to assist anyone.