Archive for February, 2021
|What British politicians won’t admit – we need to transform the welfare state | John Harris
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2021
Nearly 80 years on from its creation, the benefits system has been exposed by Covid to be broken beyond repair
I found an anecdote towards the end of The Road to 1945, the late historian Paul Addison’s history of how the second world war changed Britain. It centres on Winston Churchill, Ernest Bevin – then minister of labour in the wartime coalition government – and thousands of soldiers setting off to mainland Europe. In June 1944, two days before the D-day landings, Churchill and Bevin went to Portsmouth to say farewell to the troops. “They were going off to face this terrific battle,” Bevin recounted, “with great hearts and great courage. The one question they put to me when I went through their ranks was: ‘Ernie, when we have done this job for you are we going back on the dole?’… Both the prime minister and I answered: ‘No, you are not.’”
Despite the self-evident caveat that wars and pandemics are very different things, the parallels between the uneasy historical moment that story captures and the current phase of the Covid crisis are obvious. The past 12 months have seen a mixture of unprecedented deaths and huge collective sacrifice. Moreover, as the crisis has gone on, profound social questions that have been rattling around British politics for at least a decade – about poverty, inequality, work, and housing – have roared into the foreground. If some people are asking questions about a return to “normal” and the dashed hopes that would represent, that hardly seems unreasonable.
Related: The combination of Covid and class has been devastating for Britain’s poorest | Owen Jones
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
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Covid has damaged our small businesses. Now Brexit might finish them off | John Harris
Monday, February 15th, 2021
Multinationals can just about cope with the new UK-EU trading rules, but independent businesses are mired in problems
If you had to design a scenario guaranteed to fatten up big business while squashing the rest of the economy, it would probably resemble what Britain is living through.
Thousands of independent businesses are shuttered up. Amazon and the big supermarkets, boosted by the suspension of anything other than “essential” retail but gleefully selling a huge range of stuff, have carved up consumer spending between them. And the economic impact of Covid-19 is now fusing with an issue that will endure even as lockdown restrictions are eventually eased: the dire effects of Brexit on smaller companies staring into the future with a mixture of fear and bafflement.
John Harris is a Guardian columnist
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John's Books
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Hail! Hail! Rock'n'Roll:
The Ultimate Guide to the Music, the Myths and the Madness
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"The Dark Side of the Moon":
The Making of the "Pink Floyd" Masterpiece
So Now Who Do We Vote For?
The Last Party:
Britpop, Blair and the Demise of English Rock
Britpop:
Cool Britannia and the Spectacular Demise of English Rock
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