The recent rail strikes do not, thus far, appear to have provoked the sort of rage and resentment that the government and its loyal spokesthings in the Conservative mediaverse seemed to be hoping they would. A majority of poll responders were in favour of the industrial action and the RMT’s leader, Mick Lynch, has emerged as a somewhat anachronistic folk hero, particularly since he started promoting the idea that the government had been interfering in negotiations in order to make the strikes happen.
This theory has given rise to another one: Boris Johnson’s increasingly beleaguered and friendless administration is actively fomenting industrial unrest in order to bring about a “summer of discontent”. The idea, presumably, is to resurrect the long-quiet spectre of the “loony left” trade union movement, to provide another unifying hate figure for the Tory press. And of course, a strike-ridden summer could provide the government with something else on which to blame the country’s ever-deepening post-Brexit economic turmoil, now that the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine are rather losing their currency as scapegoats.
If the administration is indeed willing to provoke social and industrial tumult rather than admit to having committed the biggest unforced error in political history, here are Some More Crises The Government Could Deliberately Engineer To Deflect The Blame From Brexit…
THE BLACK DEATH
With the Covid pandemic having seen vaccination and, by extension, medical science in general handily politicised and turned into a culture war frontline by the likes of Piers “are there any more at home like you?” Corbyn and his legions of useful idiots, the administration might find itself tempted to bring back one of the classics.
There’s bound to be a sample of Yersinia pestis in a lab somewhere, and once it has been reintroduced into the population we can be fairly sure that everyone will forget all about Brexit, and indeed pretty much everything else.
And yes, there are treatments and vaccines available that weren’t around in the 14th and 17th centuries, but the battered and hamstrung NHS will be hard-pushed to distribute them, and who’s to say whether anyone will take advantage of these treatments, while debate rages as to whether it’s all a conspiracy by Big Flea Powder, and Mark Dolan defiantly licks a black rat on GB News?
THE GREAT FIRE OF LONDON 2.0
The last major outbreak of bubonic plague in Britain was of course in London in 1665. It lasted until – and some believe was ended by – The Great Fire of London, which broke out in September of the following year.
If the government really wants a visually spectacular catastrophe to divert attention from its own putrescence, then a good old-fashioned city-wide conflagration could be just the ticket. Besides, most of London’s public records were lost in the 1666 fire; that ALONE must be a tempting prospect for the current prime minister.
THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE
OK, now this one is going to require a BIT of organisation, but we all know there are literally no lengths Boris Johnson won’t at the very least CONSIDER going to in order to save his own skin. While there isn’t – at present – any known parasite or contagion that can actually make the dead rise up and walk in search of brains to eat, never underestimate British ingenuity when our collective backs are against the wall.
A combination of prolonged exposure to the Daily Express and a carefully maintained nutrient-free (ie traditional British) diet could, it’s believed, induce a near-zombie-like state of mindlessness. The government and its helpers are not just misinforming their followers, they’re creating the Walking Gammon Dead…
THAT HUGE TELEPORTING SQUID THING FROM THE END OF WATCHMEN (THE COMIC BOOK, NOT THE MOVIE)
A bit niche, this one, but incredibly effective if they could pull it off.
POEM OF THE WEEK
It’s just a byelection
No cause for alarm
They can have their little protest vote
It won’t do any harm
They’ll come right back for the general
Just you wait and see It’s just a byelection
A Pyrrhic victory.
Just a pair of byelections
It’s just the mid-term blues
It always happens like this
The governing side will lose
There’s no deeper indication
Of turmoil and decay
Just a pair of byelections
There’s nothing else to say.
Just a pair of massive upsets
With huge dramatic swings
And united opposition
With the power that this brings
Just complete humiliation
In the south and the Red Wall
Just a pair of byelections
No emergency at all.
Just a pair of huge majorities
That vanished suddenly
And half the parliamentary party
Thinking “that could have been me”
Just the sudden realisation
There’s no safe seat any more
Just a pair of byelections
Showing what might be in store.
