Left’s Virus Response Spooks The Right

Those out there on the right have been on a hair trigger for some days now, fearful of what the left might do in response to the Coronavirus pandemic. Even the benign suggestion from Labour Party chair Ian Lavery that members should get involved in community organising, to best help the most vulnerable in those communities, precipitated a howl of protest from the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog.

Charlotte Gill ...

So it should surprise no-one that Charlotte Gill, now for some reason gifted a berth at Conservative Home, has gone OTT in no style at all at the prospect of ordinary people and their representatives taking the opportunity to organise and advocate for workers to get a better deal, including having the audacity to demand compensation, including sick pay, for those facing poverty, having been forced to accept zero hours contracts.

Ms Gill, demonstrating why she should be in the vanguard of those emptied out of the think tanks and comment factories and sent to help get in the harvest - given that the EU migrant workers have gone home, just as the Brexiteer right wing wanted, and there is an impending labour shortage in that area - has told her remaining readers “How the Left is exploiting the Coronavirus for political gain”. Which the right isn’t, oh no.

So it must have been a figment of the imagination to read all those calls for the lockdown to be lifted on the pretext of getting the economy going, from people as diverse as the Sun’s lie-peddler emeritus Trevor Kavanagh, and Dan, Dan The Oratory Man. The calls from the so-called Taxpayers’ Alliance for greater austerity after the crisis passes - meaning those at the bottom of the pile suffer yet more - must have been a mirage.

Still, on ploughs Ms Gill, asking plaintively “Will the Left try to exploit the Coronavirus to advance a political agenda? There are increasing signs that this is the case”, citing the Fawkes massive as an authoritative source (er, no) and whining about Lavery’s call for Labour members to volunteer within their communities.

... and her new hero

Especially taxing to Ms Gill is The World Transformed, and its promotional literature telling “As the impacts of the Coronavirus crisis continue to ramp up in the UK and beyond, it’s becoming clearer day by day that we cannot rely on Boris Johnson and this Tory government … there is still huge scope for traditional workplace organising and tactics such as strikes to be successful”. Why does this spook her and her pals?

Even in the dark days of World War 2, strike action was not uncommon, and remains the weapon of last resort for organised labour. But Ms Gill does not consider that, instead getting herself terribly worked up because Grace Blakeley talked about a deepening of democracy in a future where more organisations may come under state control. Because they would have to be bailed out by … well, We The People.

The problem the right has here is that, when faced with a crisis of this scale, and seeing their usual solution - free market capitalism - unable to provide the solution, they become defensive and dig out the “Red Scare” tactics so beloved of the paranoid tradition in the US right in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Ms Gill is unable to otherwise explain why a few left-wingers using social media is going to bring about a collapse in society.

If Conservatives can’t provide the answers to our problems, what is the point of them?

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