Democracy’s salvation
America is in terminal decline; China is on the rise; the EU is too supine. What about “we, the people”? Are we colluding with the disintegration of liberal democracy by acquiescing to the “acceptable authoritarianism” of the lockdown, as Steve Bloomfield suggests? (“The new battle for democracy,” July.)
I share his concerns about liberal democracy but not his implied fatalism. “Liberal” and “democracy” are not synonymous, as Bloomfield acknowledges, but neither was their alliance an “accident.” European democrats devised rights charters to limit the powers of elected leaders because they understood that majority rule cannot ensure against tyranny. When legislating for liberty proved insufficient after the devastation of the Depression and Second World War, the UN drafted new universal human rights principles to underpin democracies, including basic economic and social rights. The failure of democratic governments to deliver such basic economic security and well-being for their populations after the 2008 crash was the decisive driver in decoupling democracy from liberal norms.
So democracy’s decay long preceded the Covid-19 crisis. Elected despots trampling on citizens’ rights are a feature of our age. But the Covid-19 crisis provides an opportunity to draw on a revived spirit of co-operation, collectivism and compassion to “build back better” and realign democracy with the values of dignity, equality and humanity. Liberty on its own will not suffice!
Francesca Klug, London School of EconomicsContaining catastrophe
Peter Frankopan’s article (“The next pandemic,” July) reminds us that few things in life carry zero risk. And some activities, such as research carried out into infectious disease in bio-containment laboratories, are essential, as we see today with Covid-19, to manage greater risks to society from natural (or deliberate) outbreaks of viral disease.
But even a very low likelihood of accidental release of a lethal pathogen, given its grave potential effect, creates a significant danger. This is an area where the precautionary principle has to be scrupulously enforced. However high the cost of security and containment measures, it has to be afforded.
It is always worth remembering, however, the well-known equation governing overall expected risk. That risk in this field is the product of four factors: the likelihood of accidental or malicious release; the vulnerability of different sectors of society to infection; the likely effectiveness of healthcare provision (and the detect, track, trace and treat system) in managing the initial impact; and then the duration of the impact on normal life, which should be reduced by the long-term building of national resilience.
Sensible investment in each factor, wherever possible, provides a layered defence so that any individual system failures do not produce catastrophe. Even if we cannot expect precise forewarning of individual outbreaks, we do have strategic warning of the general risk that we must use, so we are less surprised by surprise when it happens.
David Omand was UK security and intelligence co-ordinator. His book “How Spies Think” is published later in the yearHouse-bound politics
James Graham makes a convincing argument for the importance of physical proximity in politics (“A motion to regret virtual parliaments,” June). But the government has compelled MPs to return to Westminster prematurely. The fear of reactionaries—that MPs might get too used to a smooth and efficient system for online voting—has led to the precipitate abolition of one of the most effective hybrid virtual/in-person legislatures in the world.
In place of a temporary arrangement ensuring that MPs participating online or in the Commons chamber were able to represent their constituents with absolute parity, we now have a system which privileges those who turn up in person over those who are unable to travel to Westminster. While peers in the House of Lords have adapted to online proceedings effortlessly, MPs queueing up to vote around the Palace of Westminster have been subject to ridicule at home and abroad.
The hasty return to the old ways represents an ill-thought-through and troubling assertion of government control over parliament. Hannah White, Deputy Director, Institute for GovernmentGoing global
In “A patchwork planet” (June), Dani Rodrik asks us to imagine a new form of globalisation focused on uncontestably global public goods, such as public health or climate. He argues in favour of a “well-crafted” multilateralism that fosters cooperation with few losers, while avoiding distributional consequences within or between countries.
While few would argue against “globalisers” harvesting any remaining “win-win” opportunities, limiting international coordination purely to these efforts would hamstring our ability to tackle sprawling problems—including public health and climate change themselves. Indeed, Rodrik’s favourite example of high-yield global co-ordination, temporary labour migration from poor to rich nations, has been stymied precisely because of its “within and between” distributional consequences. Effective policy responses to pressing global challenges will create winners and losers. The hard job is not imagining a better globalisation—it’s charting a fair and democratic pathway that gets us there.
Mary E Lovely, Syracuse University/Peterson InstituteA historic fall
The fundamental changes brought about in our legal structures by the 2005 Constitutional Reform Act, a subject of recent discussion in Prospect, also included, most unfortunately as I believe, the dismemberment of the historic office of lord chancellor, stripping him of his role as head of and appointer of the judiciary, and of his speakership of the House of Lords.
This much diminished figure is now but a shadow of lord chancellors past. The holder of the office used to be of the greatest moment and wield great influence: an authoritative figure at the zenith of his political career and with no axe left to grind; the very conscience of government, there to safeguard the values of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.
Nowadays, the lord chancellor, doubling up as justice secretary, inappropriately responsible for both the administration of criminal justice and the prison estate, is a career politician, often comparatively junior and with continuing ambitions, and sometimes with no legal background whatsoever. And, as amply demonstrated by the “Enemies of the People” case (surely too well known to require exposition here), this politician is on occasion careless of the lord chancellor’s express statutory responsibility for defending the rule of law.
In the last 10 years no fewer than six different ministers have held this much depleted office, not all with conspicuous success; that is some indication of the low esteem in which it is now held and not conducive to its most effective discharge.
Simon Brown, former Supreme Court justice and author of “Playing off the Roof” (Marble Hill, £15)WHOdunnit?
The WHO will only ever be as good as its member states allow it to be, and funding is only one aspect (“Who is the WHO?” June).
Member states elect the director general and regional directors, and through the World Health Assembly and regional committees, direct how it works. The WHO cannot enter a member state without an invitation, or intervene—even in the case of an epidemic that might have transboundary implications—because that is the constraint member states have imposed.
The UK did not immediately (or perhaps at all) involve the regional office of the WHO in the BSE epidemic in the mid-1990s, which the WHO said “increased the profile of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies as a risk to human health and has already affected public health policy worldwide.”
The Johnsons and Trumps of this world have expert advisers at their disposal if they choose to use them, so if they did not sound the national alarm when the WHO sounded it internationally, then they have only themselves to blame.
Keith Baverstock was a regional adviser to the WHO Firm foundations
We have known since at least the financial crisis (remember that?) that the economy needs to be rebalanced, if not reset. And the Covid-19 emergency provides us with another opportunity to do that. As Barry Eichengreen says (“Schumpeter’s virus,” July) economic progress involves a dynamic process of change and re-orientation, built on principles to ensure equity.
Many jobs today simply did not exist 30 years ago, and the nature of work has changed radically. The big driver of that change is the process of creation and destruction of firms. Around 9-12 per cent of firms die every year and there was an annual “birth rate” of around 12-14 per cent prior to lockdown.
That creation is sharply down now, by roughly a quarter—very much in line with the overall contraction in GDP. But business creation will be the motor of eventual recovery. And so, to find the right policies, we first need to ask: what funding, infrastructure, public goods and types of workers will those new firms need to limit the sustained hit to our prosperity? Jagjit Chadha, director, NIESR When rules run away
A rule that decrees that, all other things being equal, it is more important to save the lives of younger people would reset the moral thermostat of society (“The Duel,” June). We do not know what would follow from that, but it is unlikely to be good.
Ethical and legal rules, once promulgated, do not stay in the context in which they were forged. They metastasise widely, and can affect the whole ethos of a society—determining the way that decisions are made in arenas a million conceptual miles from the original context. It may be possible to police and audit the way that the promulgated rules work; it is much harder to control the evolution and use of the new norms that, often slowly and unconsciously, emerge from the new zeitgeist. Charles Foster, Oxford
As a liberal Christian and retired hospital chaplain of 25 years’ experience, who has been at the coal face of trying to help relatives make decisions, I can relate well to both perspectives on a most pertinent ethical dilemma.
I feel that there is the need for some general principles that guide doctors’ actions and I vote “yes” to saving younger lives.
From my experience I find this to be what has happened over the years, in times of crisis. Of course in an ideal world, where there were unlimited financial resources, there would be no need even to discuss this issue, as every patient would be given appropriate care. But that is not our world today.
Clifford Chonka, NewportNothing escapes Austen
Lee Child has never read Jane Austen? (“Brief Encounter,” July.) I’d not have thought that a necessary requisite considering his genre. But he is nearer Austen than he thinks.
His maxim that “the only way to learn to write is to read for 40 years and the only way a text can have a beating heart is for it to be the organic work of one mind” must surely apply to the lady who started writing at the age of 11, cutting her teeth on the 500-odd books in her father’s library but who, sadly, only managed six major novels in her short life of 42 years.
Many a person still looks to them for escapism, either for love, wit, wisdom or social comment. There may be no overt kidnapping, killing, danger or rescue missions, but try finding them in more subtle terms in the social environment in Austen. Maureen Stiller, honorary secretary, Jane Austen SocietyYour number’s up
A small complaint about “Age-old truths” (July). The figures given report on the chances of death with Covid-19 at different ages. But your small print reveals that the data only relates to deaths in hospital. These are by definition only one kind of case. What is surely essential is to look at all cases—including those not hospitalised—in assessing and describing the overall relative risks. David Miller, physiologist, University of Glasgow
In fact:
In fact:
Of the 10,650,000 enslaved Africans who survived the Atlantic crossing, only 388,000—or 3.6 per cent—landed in the US. More Africans were brought to Barbados (435,000); 4.8m went to Brazil.
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
At any time, all of us are infected with between eight and 12 viruses without showing any symptoms.
Guardian, 30th May 2020
Thomas More is the only MP to have been made a saint, and the patron saint of politicians.
@AmIRightSir, 22nd June 2020
Out of 157 currencies in circulation, there are 315 banknotes featuring animals; the most common type of animal is the bird, on 78 notes, and the most popular bird is the eagle, on 41.
Money.co.uk, 4th May 2020
On 31st May 2020, the last American with a Civil War pension died; Irene Triplett received $877.56 a year due to her veteran father Mose Triplett, who was 83 when she was born in 1930.
Washington Post, 4th June 2020
Since the Bundesliga resumed in May, the number of home victories has slipped by 10 percentage points, to 33 per cent of matches played in empty stadiums, down from 43 per cent played to crowds.
New York Times, 1st July 2020
With a market capitalisation of $205bn, Tesla has overtaken Toyota to become the world’s most valuable carmaker—despite only producing 0.5m vehicles a year to the Japanese firm’s 10m plus.
Financial Times, 1st July 2020
Jane Austen coined the words “outsider” and “irrepressible”; Charlotte Brontë gave us “spring-clean” and, perhaps, “self-doubt.”
BBC.com, 7th May 2020
