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September 23, 2020 - 7:15am
A year ago, when we had less worry about, Brexit was everything.
We were, it seemed, a dangerously divided nation — indeed, the issue was tearing us apart. Or so we were told.
We certainly saw a political realignment at the general election — and, moreover, one that leaves the question of Scotland independence as unresolved as ever. But what about all that stuff about family splits, fractured friendships and the damage done to the very fabric of British democracy?
One test of national unity is how well a country copes with a crisis. Do people come together in the face of adversity or do they turn on one another? The pandemic was, and is, just such a test — so how are we doing?
A recent report from More in Common uses comparative polling to assess the impact of Covid-19 on British society. The overall picture is that we’re a nation at ease with itself.
Compared to all the other countries in the study (France, America, Germany, Italy, Poland and the Netherlands) significantly more Britons (53%) felt that Covid-19 had made us “more caring” as a nation. 61% of us said that we’d felt the “support and care of others.”
Though we were more likely than any other country to think that there’d be further waves of the disease, we were less likely than any country (apart from Germany) to fear further division. Interestingly, we were the only country to make a distinction between the competence of the Covid response (comparatively low marks) and its fairness (comparatively high marks). 82% of Brits felt that the measures taken were “completely reasonable” and we were more likely than any other country to say that we’d personally followed the Covid rules “very closely”.
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