The run-up to last year’s general election saw the country coming together, united by one common goal, to demand an end to Tory leadership.
From May 2010 (when David Cameron took over from Labour’s Gordon Brown) to July 2024 (when Rishi Sunak handed the keys to number ten over to Sir Keir Starmer in Labour’s landslide win), Britain has been dragged through it in more ways than can be discussed in one article.
Focusing on COVID-19 in particular, between 2020 and 2023, over 225,000 people died from the virus in the UK. Since then, countless investigations have taken place into the government’s approach to the pandemic, most notably, to their neglect.
Despite knowing the threat that COVID-19 posed to the lives of the most vulnerable members of society, the government did nothing to stop the spread of the disease among the older, and therefore most at-risk, demographic. By discharging them from hospitals before they were tested for COVID-19 (or, in some cases, even after they tested positive), the government effectively abandoned them. The blame for the 40,000 excess deaths therefore rests on the British government, undoubtedly.
‘It is as if care home residents were seen as expendable. Despite thousands of empty beds, they were de-prioritized when it came to getting access to hospital care and had blanket do-not-resuscitate orders imposed on them without due process. Such abuses are deeply disturbing’, says Amnesty International’s Senior Crisis Response Adviser, Donatella Rovera.
It was the government’s neglect, (the pandemic inquiry heard that Boris Johnson told senior advisers that the Covid virus was “just nature’s way of dealing with old people”), that saw care homes in England, at the height of the pandemic, peaking at around 400 deaths a day.
Why were old people told that they must ‘accept their fate’ while young people were told that they must ‘get on with their lives?’ Because it’s all about money, hence why the UK saw one of the worst waves of COVID-19 deaths in the world.
We were one of the countries to be hit with COVID-19 the hardest because we were, because we are, one of the countries to be hit with greed the hardest… Our government is founded on it.
With the ability to impose new laws and sanctions at their discretion, the government is above us, regardless of who is in power. Whether Conservative or Labour, preach as they may about being the ‘party for the people’, Liberal Democrats, Green or, dare I say it, Reform UK, every political party in the UK operates under authoritarianism (Adjective: ‘Favouring or enforcing strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom’) disguised as democracy.
Each side will stand up in parliament bickering over policies. We saw it happen in the last election, and every election prior. S VS S, we watched Starmer slating Sunak at BBC’s question time, berating him for not doing right by the country. Needing to believe that things would get better, people with decency believed Starmer’s promise, clinging to the hope that the chant-turned-trend of ‘Fuck the Tories’ would bring about change. And yet, here we are. Nine months on, here we are, still waiting for any real change to arise…
And so, where does that leave us now?
I used to have hope in politics. I used to believe that, once in power, Labour would put it all right, but when nine months is enough time to conceive a child, yet the only thing that Labour has conceived is (more) austerity, what hope I had in the system has, unfortunately, all faded.
The question therefore persists of… What next? What is the next step to restoring hope in a system when those who govern the system are all corrupt™ packaged up slightly differently?
If anything, the ‘lesser of two evils’ is actually worse, for with the Tories et.al. at least you know exactly who they are and who they represent — the elite and the entitled. Labour was the counterbalance to the exploitation of the working class. But now? Starmer is more Tory than the Tories.
Alas, why can’t we have a system that is actually for the people, not the privileged? Why can’t we live in a world within which humanity counting for more than profit isn’t seen as utopic?
Chance would be a fine thing.
I don’t want to have to vote for the lesser of two evils anymore, but what is the alternative? To not vote at all? As a woman especially, not voting, in my opinion, is an ignorant move. When the Suffragettes died for our right to vote, I cannot let that be in vain. And so yes, I will vote for the ‘lesser of two evils’, but I will not be complicit in these times of great deceit. I will write and I will write and I will write. It might never be enough to have any great impact, but small impacts are still impacts.
Tap on a wall enough times and eventually the whole thing will come down and, sitting amongst piles of bricks and rubble, from the wreckage, we will rebuild.
Anarchism. It’s the only way forward.
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains .”
Karl Marx.
Portfolio of Hope 