March 24th
World wide cases 417,663, Deaths 18,605
Last night Boris Johnson announced a lockdown for the UK while today Leo Varadkar stiffened the restrictions here, shutting down businesses and curtailing individual behaviour. The crisis continues its slouch towards Babylon with a viral pandemic that has reached all corners of the globe. The pubs in Ireland have been shut since March 15th and over the weekend, a couple of days ago, I saw through our window that faces the street something new, late night ramblers, slouching past zombie-like, prompted either through dislocation because with the pubs shut they didn’t know what to do with themselves, or because late night was the best time to avoid other people and the risk of contagion. Each day brings something new. Overnight the US Senate reached agreement on a 2 trillion USD package to support businesses and employees. Yesterday, I noticed that wearing plastic gloves in public had overnight became standard for ladies around here. Not so much if any mask wearing, but gloves, yes, all the way, but only for the ladies. The guys are still working on getting their social distancing game up to scratch.
It’s interesting to observe the behaviour of conservative governments in this crisis. The electorally successful flavour of conservatism that is seen in the UK, US and Brazil is called the new right, also alt-right, also populism. To my unschooled, non-rightwing observation, it appears to comprise of a coalition between small government Regan-ites who want low taxes, less regulation and unrestricted flows of capital, and nationalists who dismayed at the loss of economic security in Western countries want to restrict immigration bring industry back on-shore and put in places trade barriers to competition from overseas, especially China. These two groups differ in temperament, tastes, and motivation – one cares about capital and is motivated by greed, the other cares about security and is motivated by fear – but they share a common enemy – the largely urban, progressive class who want coordinated global action on climate change, public heath care provision and for whom immigration is a positive and an inevitable side-product of the global inequalities that persist and from which they themselves have benefited. During the Brexit saga, it seemed to me that the champions of capital group were the officer class while the Neo-nationalists were the rank and file. The Officer class were happy to champion the concerns of the ordinary soldiers in return for obedience and votes. However, in their house organs and among themselves, the officer class revealed their true intentions – a further rolling back of the state to allow productive private industry to flex its muscles and get things done, and antagonism to any trans-national efforts to regulate and tax flows of capital. The Officer class was happy to support the rank and file’s priority of immigration control for as long as capital is free to roam the seven seas in search of return there will always be places to source labour at an attractive price point. Capital things global, labour is obsessed with local.