I've lived through plenty of social shocks – this time we must learn the lessons | Polly Toynbee
The left hopes coronavirus will lead to change, but it's far from certain
Nothing will ever be the same again, they say. Everything will change. The Covid-19 outbreak raises the hope that Britain has learned its lesson. The shock of a long lockdown and the horror of morgues in freezer trucks should shake sense into us, surely? The prospect of dying alone among 4,000 strangers gasping for air in the ExCeL centre ought to jolt us into better ways. I hope so, but I don't know so.
I have lived through plenty of "nothing will ever be the same again" events - social shocks to the way we live, feel and think. Some great upheavals led to positive change: look how the Attlee government emerged from the deprivations of war. Aged five, I stood at the school bus stop in the great London smog of December 1952: no sunlight, fog so pea-soup thick we couldn't see the bus to flag it down. Though as many as 12,000 died, good came of it. The Clean Air Act cured my wheezing winters of pre-penicillin bronchitis. But the lesson wasn't learned for ever: 40,000 people a year die now from preventable air pollution in the UK.
The lessons seem blindingly clear: never again leave the public realm so perilously weak. We rely on it for life itself
Related: Universal basic income is the best way to help the self-employed | Owen Jones
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...