Post-viral Britain: A Midsummer night’s dream
As the tumultuous year of 2020 reaches its halfway mark, we should pause for reflection. None of what has befallen this bewildered nation was foreseen last winter. Anyone who doubts that we are living through an unprecedented, life-changing experience should pay a visit to central London. The beating heart of the capital is still eerily empty, with almost everything still closed and the familiar buzz of activity barely detectable. Coronavirus has imposed a kind of tunnel vision on governors and governed alike. As we emerge blinking into an altered world, what have we learned about ourselves? What is our Midsummer night’s dream?
Those who have secretly enjoyed the enforced leisure of lockdown should be in no doubt that others less fortunate are frantic with worry. A new poll by Adzuna reveals that 44 per cent of the British workforce fear losing their jobs when the furlough scheme ends — a figure that rises to 75 per cent among those earning £25,000 or less. Another poll by the Resolution Foundation found that many lower-income families are only keeping afloat by borrowing: while the better-off are saving, their poorer counterparts are 50 per cent more likely to be dependent on credit. For millions of us, the strange dreams that many report having during the pandemic are just an unending nightmare.
However grim the present may be, though, we are still entitled to hope for a better future. As we mark Midsummer this Wednesday, let us console ourselves with a vision of what might yet be achieved this year if we can but hold our nerve and work to preserve the insights gleaned from the crisis.
All of us, surely, want our country to become a kinder, cleaner, healthier place. The restrictions on our mobility and lifestyle during lockdown, onerous as they are, have reminded us of what was wrong with life before Covid-19. Missing so much that we had taken for granted we now realise that most of us had lost sight of the things that really matter: family get-togethers, politeness to strangers, looking after the vulnerable, protecting our environment, treating all creatures, great and small, as precious. As we return to normality, we may realise with a jolt just how abnormal much of what we were accustomed to doing really was. Few of us, for example, will be flying abroad this summer; many will forgo a holiday altogether. But will we really miss the stress of the mandatory foreign vacation?
Working from home has forced those who previously lived only for their office to ask themselves whether their business is necessarily worse off. Many offices, shops and other premises will be redundant. Local authorities should move swiftly to allow landlords to convert commercial into residential property to relieve the pressure on housing that had become unbearable. But they should also ensure that new accommodation is not snapped up by foreign investors who have no intention of occupying or even letting it. We want no more of the empty developments that have darkened and blighted urban life in recent years.
The anticipated exodus to the country, led by city dwellers seeking not to retire but to work from home, will not be universally welcomed by rural communities, many of whom fear for their way of life. Yet town and country need one another. Mutual interests and acceptance should ensure that our rustic paradise is not lost.
We must seize the opportunity to redress some of the social disparities in education. In France all children are going back to school this week. Given that the health risks are generally agreed to be very low, we are entitled to ask: why them and not us? Shocked by the fact that up to 40 per cent of our ten million schoolchildren have been doing little or no work during lockdown, Government has announced a tutoring fund for the poorest pupils, starting this summer. Tutoring, long the preserve of the well-to-do, ought to be available for all. Looking into the future, we will require a huge national effort to lift the life-chances of children from those families that have been unable to support them in distance learning. Now, at least, we know who they are. The French, whose president famously married his teacher, are right to prioritise education. We cannot afford to become the dunces of Europe.
Nor can we allow our cultural riches to be squandered and our posterity deprived of them. Among the collateral damage of this crisis has been the spectacle of the arts lying fallow: museums, galleries, theatres, cinemas, concert halls shuttered, ensembles idle and audiences absent.
In an interview for the Sunday Times (behind a paywall), Sir Simon Rattle laments the loss of the “shared space” which make the performing arts such an essential part of our national life. “To think things will go back to business as usual is to take optimism to an incredible degree. I think we will be living with this condition for some years yet,” he says. For England’s greatest conductor, making live music is no luxury: “This is not something that we can say ‘Oh, that was part of a previous civilisation.’ We are going to need this more and more.” But how do we find new ways to perform safely, while preserving the human capital without which the arts will wither and die? “Everybody will be looking at another model. But another model will take time, not only to imagine, but to put into practice. And we will need some bridge to get there. I think we will be more local in future. And I think in many ways this will be a good thing.”
What Sir Simon says about the performing arts goes for many other parts of our culture and indeed our body politic. For example, we should ask whether we still need a House of Lords with more than 800 members, soon to be supplemented by another 30 newly created peers. At least half could probably be retired without noticeable loss. The rest, apart from full-time working peers, should only be paid attendance allowances if they really do attend in person. The House of Commons should likewise have the decency to cut its costs and set an example to the country.
The same goes for all our elites, especially the more ostentatious among them: the rock stars and sports idols, the celebrities and tycoons. The only form of conspicuous consumption that passes muster at this time is the philanthropic kind. Even philanthropists should not expect to be rewarded with honours, still less those who merely lend their names to a campaign.
Never have we needed the gossamer-thin fancies and distractions of Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream as much as we do now. If only we could apply to Covid-19 Oberon’s advice to “think no more of this night’s accidents but as the fierce vexation of a dream”. Yet we should never forget our great good fortune. Even in the midst of pandemic and recession, the British Isles are still closer than anywhere on earth to the ancient isles of the blessed.
