Instead of idealising people like Tom Moore, let’s hold politicians to account for their failures
Today Captain Tom Moore died from COVID-19, and tributes have been pouring in from all over in honour of him, including the Prime Minister and the Queen. Of course my condolences are with his family, just like they are for the families of every single person who has died from coronavirus in the world. But his passing also illustrates a wider trend that I keep seeing. Our response to an absence of effective political action in the face of a public health emergency is to put various other ordinary people with no real power on a pedestal. Our admiration for these people is performative at best, rather than meaningful. Meanwhile, actual elected politicians — who should be held accountable for how poorly they’ve handled this crisis — are instead hiding behind this smokescreen that distracts from the sheer level of incompetence.
Captain Moore made headlines for doing 100 laps of his garden to raise money for the NHS, and he was gifted a free trip to Barbados and even awarded a knighthood for his efforts. The centenarian was lauded by politicians and the media, and don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying what he did wasn’t admirable. But it distracts from the much bigger issue of accountability, and I don’t just mean of the Conservative party (though, since we’re on the subject, the Tories’ missteps are almost infinite at this point) — I also mean the Labour party and its pathetic excuse for a real opposition in Keir Starmer. Put simply: Captain Moore raised £33 million for an NHS the Tories continue to cut funding to, inching further towards privatisation. And because the Tories’ slogan throughout this is “protect the NHS”, the country doesn’t all see that they are doing anything but protecting our healthcare system. Inevitably that is why I have no faith in us ever being able to escape from Tory rule. If the government did right by the NHS and allocated funding generously during a public health crisis, Captain Moore wouldn’t have needed to take even one step into his garden.
The government has the power to make decisions like this, but they choose not to because they have other priorities — namely, the economy, which is why Eat Out to Help Out likely caused the second wave to start. And mainstream media don’t help with this, with poorly thought out cartoons like Rishi fucking Sunak as Superman on the BBC, for instance. ITV and BBC bent over backwards to broadcast live coverage of the Clap for Carers — including prominent politicians — during the first lockdown. It started off a nice gesture, sure, but those politicians included the Prime Minister and the leader of the Opposition. They could have ensured higher pay and sufficient PPE for NHS workers instead decided unilaterally that applauding and bashing pots and pans was enough on its own. If they passed a bill for that, they could clap for the rest of eternity for all I care.
And this isn’t a problem unique to the UK. Across the pond, they did the same thing in the face of even greater incompetence — latched onto whoever displayed even a hint of common sense and elevated them practically to godlike status. People like Dr Anthony Fauci, whose missteps during the Trump administration have been swept under the carpet largely because the public jumped at the nearest person on that podium who wasn’t telling the American public to inject themselves with bleach. With legit Fauci merchandise, mainstream centrist media defers to him being the adult in the room, and it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that Fauci has a fanbase.
Same with Governor Andrew Cuomo, who was similarly woobified in the media when New York was first hit with coronavirus in 2020. The fact that he did the simple thing of being decisive in shutting things down earned him more than just respect or credit, but rather an undeserved level of popularity and a fucking Emmy. That was quite honestly frustrating to see given he’s not as heroic as people laud him to be — his bungling of the vaccinations being a clear example. Like Fauci, Cuomo was objectified to an uncomfortable level, with the new fad being people coining the term “Cuomosexual”.
But what about Bernie, do you ask? Well, Senator Bernie Sanders did recently feature in a popular meme, one that I admit I love, when he was pictured at the Biden inauguration. With Senator Sanders, though, he capitalised on his popularity in a way that was genuinely meaningful — by raising $1.8 million for national charities.
And that’s not all. The man himself said it best: “But even this amount of money is no substitute for action by Congress.” As the new chairman of the Budget Committee, he aims to use reconciliation, a means by which the Democrats could finally pass some legislation in the Senate by sidestepping the filibuster and requiring only a simple majority. So he’s doing what politicians across the board should be doing — using his power, his influence, and the fact that he was democratically elected in full force, to help his people. Politicians would do well to follow in his example, but I guess if they really wanted to do that, he would be president right now, not Biden.
We live in a digital age and this stuff — memes, social media, merch — really shapes our perspective of public figures. I don’t want us to be revisionist in our history, even in the present, let alone the past. If we make it out of this mess, I want to be able to look back on this terrible time and not be under any illusions about our politicians’ failures, and why the good ones are few and far between.
