THE story of Jenny McGee, the nurse who had kept vigil on Boris Johnson while he was gravely ill in intensive care resigning has an almost folkloric quality to it, as does much of the pandemic experience.
Picture Jenny tending to the fetid hulk of the Prime Minister, the epitome of broken Britain captured in a moment of life and death, the underpaid worker literally nursing back to life the priapic Etonian buffoon only to be rewarded with a manipulated photo-opportunity at No 10 and a paltry 1% pay offer.
The exchange neatly encapsulates the country we’re part of: disfigured by inequality, ruled-over by a shallow and contemptuous elite and staggering constantly between total collapse and dreams of grand and magnificent renewal.
All of this unfolds in the murky-soup of Britain’s constitutional mayhem and in the context of simply not knowing some basic precepts about democratic rules and structures.
READ MORE: Nurse who cared for Covid-hit Boris Johnson resigns over 'lack of respect' for NHS
As Nicola Sturgeon is to be sworn in as First Minister at the Court of Session with a renewed mandate for a referendum its status and legality remains blurry.
Britain’s neo-feudal ancien regime staggers on held up by its own dogma of confusion and the crutch of social deference. This deliberately befuddled state has some backstory. In the royals case of 1953 – which concerned whether the new queen should style herself Elizabeth II in Scotland, where there had never been an Elizabeth I – the Scottish judge Lord Cooper made the pronouncement that the unlimited sovereignty of parliament was an exclusively English concept, which had no counterpart in Scottish constitutional law.”
Sovereignty – the great rallying cry of both independence and Brexit – remains an elusive concept as we tip-toe tentatively back into each others arms and sip on frothy pints again.
But if there’s legal ambiguity that acts as a fog to political strategy, other aspects are more clear:
Is there a democratic deficit in Britain between the government Scotland elects and the government Scotland gets?
Yes.
Is there a legal route for Scotland to decide its future?
No.
This won’t go away and as we pretend the worst is over and the very British performance of inquiries and reviews begins the very worst of governance will be revealed. Like the backlog of mental health and other illnesses displaced and delayed by the pandemic we can only begin to imagine the state of sleaze, incompetence and negligence it will reveal. But we have an inkling. The corruption of Johnson’s regime hasn’t exactly been pursued by the mainstream media but it’s not exactly been top secret either.
As the Union wheezes on, its life support system is packing in and dark irony abounds. Jenny McGee was a lead intensive care nurse at St Thomas’s hospital in London. She described what took place at St Thomas’s as a “cesspool of Covid”.
She said: “At one point I don’t know how to describe the horrendousness of what we were going through. We were desperate.”
Here is a moment where a cleverer politician than Johnson could have made a unifying gesture as the country (sic) tries to endure and recover. Instead, choosing to exploit one of the people who saved his life he has reaffirmed what we already know about him.
The irony in all of this is that Britain is unravelling not just because of the multiple constitutional crises in Ireland, Wales and Scotland but because the very institutions, the sinews of “Britain”, like the NHS have been sold off, privatised and used to line the pockets of Johnson’s mates.
The railways, the Post Office, telecoms, and dozens of other key utilities and industries were sold-off one by one – and if Britain has little to hold itself together other than the Bake-Off and Kate and Wills, this is why.
But if Britain has been sold, what was the price?
THESE days in Scotland the only place you’ll see a Union Jack is Ibrox or George Square, which apparently has become the venue for routine and mass displays of lumpen violence, about which, apparently, no-one can do anything at all.
These are the new poster-boys for the Union, the Better Together Ultras, the only visible adherents to the Old Order. They can operate with impunity in the city, the Strathclyde police openly saying there’s little they can do.
It’s funny that, I’ve never been on a demo that the police couldn’t contain or quash (with or without violence). I’ve been on huge mass protests and the police always had the numbers to control them. So its quite the message to put out there: Glasgow is basically captured by a loyalist mob. If I was a Scottish politician I’d be ashamed to preside over that reality, and if I was a senior Scottish politician I’d be calling in top brass of the police force for a chat.
I digress.
Last year the Royal College of Nursing surveyed their members. Nearly three quarters (73%) of their 42,000 members across the UK said higher pay would make them feel more valued. Many of them, like Jenny McGee, are leaving in droves.
READ MORE: Kenmure Street: The lessons to be learned from Glasgow's Home Office stand-off
After the toughest year of their lives they were faced with a derisory pay offer.
The British government claims that paying public workers more is not sustainable as we attempt to “recover the economy”. Though how this squares with spending tens of billions of pounds increasing the number of nuclear warheads at Faslane from 180 to 260 is anyone’s guess.
It does fit the pattern of post-Brexit / mid-pandemic Britain though, convulsed by hubris and neo-imperial flights of fantasy while incapable of finding the moral compass or taking care of the ordinary. It’s Boris Johnson’s Britain writ large.
At one end of the country Britain is celebrated as an excuse for public disorder and sectarian violence, at the other it is used as an excuse for cleptoracy.
Britain is on life support. We should place a Do not Rescusitate order on it.
Now.
Why are you making commenting on The National only available to subscribers?
We know there are thousands of National readers who want to debate, argue and go back and forth in the comments section of our stories. We’ve got the most informed readers in Scotland, asking each other the big questions about the future of our country.
Unfortunately, though, these important debates are being spoiled by a vocal minority of trolls who aren’t really interested in the issues, try to derail the conversations, register under fake names, and post vile abuse.
So that’s why we’ve decided to make the ability to comment only available to our paying subscribers. That way, all the trolls who post abuse on our website will have to pay if they want to join the debate – and risk a permanent ban from the account that they subscribe with.
The conversation will go back to what it should be about – people who care passionately about the issues, but disagree constructively on what we should do about them. Let’s get that debate started!
Callum Baird, Editor of The National
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel