Life in the Pandemic XV: The big story…..

I’ve already confessed my liking for “The West Wing”, which for the record I’m continuing to enjoy. I know that at the very end of the umpteen seasons there will be an episode about the transition between the eponymous hero and his successor. It will of course, once again, stand as a stark contrast with the great sulk currently going on in the Whitehouse. If you need another reminder of just how different what is currently playing out is to previous US presidential elections, go online and watch the concession speeches of John McCain and Mitt Romney (both of the same party as the current occupant of the Whitehouse, conceding to a winner from the other party), or Al Gore (conceding to George W. after the Supreme Court halted the Florida recount). You’ll find a further contrast in how Obama and Biden handled the transition to Trump and Pence - they offered full and friendly cooperation, notwithstanding the nonsense, slander and ignorance that they’d endured for years from Trump.

Trump’s presidency began with chaos and incompetence. Apparently much of the transition advice and support offered to his transition team was spurned. Team Trump knew better and trusted nothing. They were the great disruptors, and didn’t need any advice from a corrupt Washington elite. It didn’t work out well, and it isn’t ending well. We then found ourselves listening to arguments about the size of the Trump crowd at his inauguration – poor Shawn Spicer had to insist that it was larger than Obama’s, when all the evidence was to the contrary (although Obama really wasn’t that bothered). This led to an early example of Trump double-speak introduced on his behalf by Kellyanne Conway – she of “alternative facts” fame. That all occupied a couple of weeks of Presidential and media attention while he should have been getting on with the business of governing. Some stuff didn’t get done. Other stuff (like the “Muslim ban”) was done sloppily and blocked, at least initially, in the courts. And then of course we had four more years of the same, ending with the grotesque incompetence of the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic. We can argue about the politics. But this last calumny has cost lives. It’s difficult to say how many, and all the blame should not be laid at Trump's door, but a big slice of it should. Now he apparently splits his time between sulking, tweeting and golfing. Meanwhile, more of his countrymen get sick, and more of them die.

Some will say, of course, that there have been real achievements in the US in the last four years, like a booming economy (arguable and now moot) and a much more conservative US Supreme Court (unarguable). But Mexico paid for no wall, the swamp was more than topped up, and US standing in the world was devalued (to the delight of autocrats and dictators everywhere). Partisan politics is one thing. But why over 70 million US voters find this so attractive a record that they voted for “four more years” has me stumped. I suppose at a minimum it shows that Trump has moved the dial with ongoing consequences for US and world politics when he goes (assuming he does). But does any of this matter? In a funny way I want to argue that in one sense that it really doesn’t. I should have my attention elsewhere.

It takes an effort to remember what life was like pre-Trump, just like it takes an effort to remember what life was like pre-pandemic. So much has apparently changed in a relatively short space of time. And I have to confess much of the detail of the period has sucked me in. That’s partly because of the nature of what’s going on, and partly because I’m me – I like the detail of stuff. With the benefit of the interweb and the twenty-four hour news cycle, those of us who are so inclined have been able to hang of every vote tally, from every state, in the US election (if we wanted to). We’ve been able to overdose on commentary, counter commentary, claim and nuance. Through the pandemic we’ve been able to see the numbers from across the world, compare first peaks and second peaks, argue about the true value of “r”, fret about the number of recruits to phase 3 vaccine studies. And on, and on. But there’s a bigger, deeper picture to be seen, and it’s the one that should have been holding my attention. I don’t mean that the instead of attending to the minutiae we should instead track and discuss big claimed cultural or intellectual shifts or economic and political trends instead. Such things may or may not be of interest. What I do mean is that underpinning the detail and the “big shifts” there is an even bigger story, and that’s the one I should be focused on.

Let me illustrate with what might seem like a digression. There’s a lot of history in the Old Testament. It’s not quite history as we would find it today in a history textbook. That’s not because what is recorded is untrue (although I admit this is contested), it’s because the Bible’s concern is about motive and meaning as much as it is about times, places, people, comings, goings and doings. Buried away in the book of 2 Kings, you’ll find an account of the reign of a king called Jeroboam II summed up in all of six verses (2 Kings 14:23-29). In many ways Jeroboam was very successful and effective. If you or I were writing a history of ancient Israel we would probably have lingered over him much longer than the writer of 2 Kings does. If you lived in Israel at the time of Jeroboam II, you might well have thought that things were going rather well. For many people at the time things seemed politically, economically and militarily stable at home and even abroad (a rare thing there and then). Politics in his day wasn’t quite the same as today of course, but no doubt Jeroboam and those around the royal court thought this had something to do with them. Spiritually, they had hedged their bets. There was certainly plenty of religion around, some designed to keep God placated, and some to keep other “deities” happy too. They should have known better, and indeed could have known better by paying attention to what God was saying in their day. What He had to say to them can be found in two or three other OT books (Hosea, Jonah and Amos). It does not make for comfortable reading. Underneath the detail of those days, was the Living God working out His purposes. And that was the bigger story that got completely missed. What you’ll find in Hosea, Amos and Jonah still speaks today.

That bigger story is still being told and those same purposes are still being worked out. While the connection between the nitty gritty detail and the big picture are from moment to moment fairly opaque (at least to me), I have a whole Bible that makes clear the big picture, the direction of travel, and the purposes of God, which it turns out are far from mysterious. As with so many areas of life, not being able to understand everything is not the same as understanding nothing. It is this story I should be fixated on. While the West Wing may be diverting entertainment, and  CNN (other news organisation are available) may be a useful stimulus to informed prayer, the big story is His story. That’s what underpins, shapes or critiques every other story. That is where my attention really should be.

What’s all this about more debate?

Here’s where my “remain” friends (and most of my friends voted remain) and me probably part company. I suspect most of them have been spluttering over their cornflakes and muttering darkly at TV news bulletins of late, because of the latest shenanigans at Westminster. And I understand why. They voted remain in the EU referendum (as did I) because they thought it was right and sensible. Probably, like me, they did not vote remain because the EU filled them with unalloyed joy (discussed further here). It’s a human institution with all the faults and flaws of any human institution (and a few extra ones to boot). But it made political sense to stay in, on the basis that many of the problems we face don’t respect borders and are better tackled as part of a larger political block. It made economic sense because the states of the EU form our largest and nearest market. Indeed the single market is as much a British construction as it is a European one. I could go on. But I won’t (at least not about all the reasons for voting remain). Leaving, they genuinely believed then and now, was and is madness. Leaving with “no deal” they regard as tantamount to national self-harm on an epic scale. I’m not sure I would put it that strongly. Time will, unfortunately, probably tell.

Their anger over Boris’ latest wheeze is genuine too. I have no reason to believe anything else. They see him as using illegitimate (if not strictly illegal) tactics to thwart the attempts of his Brexit opponents to scupper a “no deal” Brexit. Some, I have no doubt, think that the proroguing of Parliament is antidemocratic because it will deny the people’s representatives the opportunity to scrutinise the intentions and actions of the Executive. And with some justification they will point out that during the recent Conservative election campaign, Boris and a number of his current cabinet colleagues, sought to pacify moderate elements in the Conservative selectorate and garner votes by implying that they would not do what they have essentially just done. These various views are shared by a very large number of people. Last time I looked, well over 1.6M had signed a petition against proroguing Parliament. Polls suggest that there is currently a majority of that view by some margin. And there have been protests in many UK towns and cities.

As far as the proroguing issue goes, here’s my problem with those who have a problem. Their basic case seems to be that this is a manoeuvre to deny Parliament the opportunity to debate the issues around leaving the EU, particularly those raised by leaving without an agreement – the no deal scenario. But exactly what is there to debate that hasn’t been fully aired over the last three years? Who is there left in Parliament (or the country for that matter) that lacks the information required to form a view? The result of the referendum itself and how it should be responded to has been discussed to death. Early on the idea was floated that Parliament should simply refuse to act on what technically was an advisory vote. This was rejected. The overwhelming majority were clear that the result had to be honoured. Most MPs in 2016, and in the post 2017 House of Commons voted remain, and a minority of them have never reconciled themselves to the idea of leaving the EU. This I understand. But then, why did they vote 6-to-1 to put what was a complex and nuanced decision to the people in a binary referendum in the first place? Yes, David Cameron pushed the issue of a referendum for relatively selfish political and party management reasons. But he was aided and abetted by the political class as a whole, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Greens and others. They all abrogated their responsibilities are all guilty for the resulting chaos.The historians can argue about how the guilt should be precisely divided up when the dust has settled.

Post referendum, and post Cameron, we had a general election. There were pro-EU membership/anti-Brexit options on the ballot paper in the form of the Liberal Democrats, Greens and occasional others. But these were decisively rejected. We saw the return (although perhaps temporarily) of two-party politics.  Of those two main parties, both made clear they would seek a negotiated withdrawal from the EU, so honouring the referendum result. Labour went further. They were specific in their rejection of no-deal, and said they would reject it as an option if they formed the government. The election was a close run thing, but Labour didn’t form the government because the Conservatives got more votes (although a relatively small win in terms of votes cast was then magnified by parliamentary arithmetic). But the options were there.

It is the no deal issue that has galvanised many of my remain friends, petition signers, press and politicians on all sides. It is presumably no deal, so the argument goes, that won’t be scrutinised and debated if Boris gets away with prorogation. But hang on, specifically this issue has been the subject of debate for months. It has been voted on in the Commons. Parliamentary skulduggery has even been resorted to by the opponents of no deal, with active support from the Speaker of the Commons. It’s not just Boris and his acolytes who can dive through gaps in our unwritten constitution. The debate has produced more heat than light and precious little agreement. Some insist that no deal will be an unmitigated disaster, others see it as the ideal clean break with the EU. Most are probably somewhere between these extremes. But the notion that it has not been debated, or that further debate is going to make any difference is not sustainable.

I have no idea precisely what the effect of a no deal Brexit will be. I am sure that there will be disruption. There will be costs. I don’t really see where there will be benefits. Will it be a disaster on the scale of war or famine or plague? Probably (hopefully) not. But this was always one of the possible ways of exiting the EU. It was also always one of the potential outcomes of the Article 50 process that Parliament voted, overwhelmingly, to trigger. In the referendum campaign, we were warned about the potential hit to the economy and jobs if we decided to leave. I found the warnings plausible, many did not. Some may or may not have been persuaded by the fantasy promises of the various out campaigns. But with all of that ringing in our ears a majority of my fellow citizens voted to leave the EU. We’ve now had three further years of debate. There’s no evidence of mass buyer’s remorse or that another referendum would produce a very different result, although conceivably it might produce a different outcome. But that would hardly help settle things. If it was remain 52% vs leave 48% (not entirely implausible if the polls are to be believed), why should that result be allowed to stand when the first one was reversed? Parliament ducked its obligations and handed the decision to the people. The people took the decision. The debate has been had. The democratic thing to do is implement the decision. It will be messy. But if democracy means anything is it surely that we get what we (or at least the majority) vote for.

But one final note. Recently I’ve been thinking about the life and times of a character in the Bible called Jonah. He lived in turbulent times. His own nation had been on the up, and under the current regime things seemed to be going well. It looked like the King (Jeroboam II) was doing well, militarily, politically and economically. I bet the King Jeroboam thought so. But it turned out there was a whole other level of reality that the King, and many people of the day in Israel, were missing. Their success was far more to do with providential timing and God moving the pieces on the international chess board, than Jeroboam's genius. He was working His larger purposes out. We know this because it’s helpfully recorded in 2 Kings 14:23-27, and explained further in the books of Jonah, Amos and Hosea. We live in turbulent times, nationally and internationally. This is not all and only about us, votes, debates, protest, politics and tactics. Providence may be merciful to us, and may come through these present difficulties unscathed. It might not. But the likes of Jonah, Amos and Hosea have a lot to say to us today. About the humility required of leaders if nothing else. Their own people, in their own time, did not listen to them. Perhaps we are in danger of making the same mistake.