Barry Turner

By Barry Turner Columnist

It is beginning to dawn on the world that the failure to get the predictions right on Coronavirus has cost us globally hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars. We have seen that countries that planned better have suffered less in terms of lives — but the great leveller is the economy.  Even those who have mercifully kept the death toll down will still be hit by an economic crisis deeper and probably longer than the financial crash of 2008.

In recent days there has been a small injection of optimism into our daily news bulletins that have caused us great anxiety in the last three months. The pandemic is beginning to wane, we are returning to normal. The Brexit debate, now long hidden behind the daily mortality roll, is now coming back into our newspapers and our news broadcasts. Even that is cheering us up after years of winding us up. Something other than Covid-19 for us to think about.

Sorry folks, it’s time to be vigilant again. Stay alert! There are other problems brewing.

Our newspapers and broadcast media are now reminding us again that the ‘cliff edge’ that obsessed them so much only a few months ago is now only six months away. The transition period, after which we are finally severed from the EU, is looming and we still don’t have a deal. Some argue that the UK government does not want a deal and its intransigence and desire to do things differently, come what may, has been displayed during the pandemic loud and clear. Our former European partners also have chosen to act as nation states during this period rather than a federation and we are seeing the consequences.

So, our press and media tell us the no-deal scenario is looking likely and once again each side predicts either the sunny uplands of economic and political freedom, a new influence in the world or isolation, crippling tariffs and slow descent into a marginalised irrelevance. The WTO will sort it out say one side, “who needs a deal anyway”.  The other side tell us that even ‘out’ we must remain closely attached to the continental mainland or suffer eternal austerity. It is remarkable how blinkered both sides of the argument are.

Now we need to ask what is the next crisis, a second wave of Covid-19, possibly, Brexit cliff edge getting likely, constitutional crisis in the United States, almost certain. It might be all three, and they’re interlinked.

Just over two months before we finally leave the EU the American people vote to choose their next president. Four years after Trump came to power in a year that shook us all up, it’s time to vote again. Dire predictions are now starting to emerge about the potential outcomes of that election and people are starting to ask in the US “what if Trump won’t go”. He is already sending the signals that he might not, in fact he was doing that before the last Presidential election when he infamously announced he would accept the result only if he won.

Now he is gearing up for the election and already he is telling us in his tweets that an election fraud against him is underway. In a total distortion of the truth, he suggests that voting by mail is some sinister Democrat conspiracy to unseat him. It is a racing certainty that unless he wins the 2020 election that that will be his argument screamed at high volume on Twitter and elsewhere.  Donald does not lose, if he is not returned it will not be because the American people don’t want him, it will be because he was cheated. So we perhaps need to look to the possible consequences of that.

Lawrence Douglas in his book Will He Go? Trump and the Looming Election Meltdown in 2020 sets out an alarming scenario of Trump refusing to go after an election defeat. The book demonstrates a huge gap in the famous system of checks and balances on power in the US. No one really knows what would happen if an incumbent president, who had just lost an election, would not stand down. Douglas is of course concerned with the consequences for the American people and political system, but just like the world should have woken up earlier to what was happening in China, it is essential we look to the global fallout of such a disaster apparently situated in a foreign land somewhere.

So, what will we in the UK and Europe do if this disaster unfolds just as we approach the December 31 deadline? What kind of trade deal with the US would we get from a US in what Douglas calls a meltdown? We know that any trade deal with the Trump administration would in any case have been as flaky as his suntan, but what if we don’t even know who the president is? What if he is still there on January 20 with Joe Biden in some ‘counter-White House’ down the road? Who will Boris Johnson be dealing with in such a situation? Trump, Biden even Nancy Pelosi perhaps?

Who will the EU recognise as Commander in Chief, who will NATO? The reader will note that that was a long list of questions. The big problem is no one seems either to have a clue what the answers might be, or even have contemplated the questions themselves. The UK government seem to have a habit of driving towards ‘cliff edges’ with a spectacularly Micawberesque confidence that everything will work out all right.

That has cost thousands of lives and tens of thousands of jobs in the last three months and the failure to understand potential consequences still seems to either elude them, or they simply do not care. We must be optimistic that the pandemic will end and the crisis will soon be over.  Let’s hope that before the next crisis arises that all the ‘experts’ and ‘advisors’ we are assured keep us safe will get their message across to those elected to govern us. Hope springs eternal, they may one day even keep us informed of that.

Barry Turner is a Senior Lecturer in War Reporting and Human Rights and a member of the Royal United Services Institute.

By Barry Turner Columnist

If Israel and Palestine can work together, there can be no excuse for a no-deal Brexit.

Encouraging and uplifting stories have been a rare commodity in the last three months. Perpetual bad news has not very often been countered by stories of hope in spite of clapping campaigns and children’s rainbow paintings displayed in windows across the country. While the efforts should be themselves applauded, we have had to listen to pessimistic predictions of death toll, second waves and even of having to live with COVID-19 for the foreseeable future. There is little wonder that dire warnings of a mental health epidemic have been added to our already large array of troubles.

There is however a remarkable story of hope and inspiration. Throughout the pandemic crisis Israel has partially lifted its blockade of Palestinian territories allowing testing kits and other anti-COVID-19 supplies to Gaza and the West Bank. The Palestinians have reciprocated by turning their textile industries to making much needed PPE and supplying Israeli hospitals and medical services with masks and protective equipment.

This has resulted in a boost in employment for Palestinians who have for decades been impoverished by a conflict that is generations old. It shows us that co-operation is better than conflict in a crisis. It is a graphic demonstration that where a crisis arises, insularity and exclusion are not the best way forward, but that they are the best ally the crisis can have in perpetuating itself. It is not the first time that this has been seen, which makes it all the more peculiar that so many politicians and governments think national chauvinism and the glaring misnomer of national self-interest can ever provide a solution.

The Coronavirus crisis has brought into sharp focus the failings of governments and politicians all over the world. The smoke screen of comparison of deaths, R numbers and who did what right first hides the reality that there were no successes in this pandemic, yes some did ‘better’ than others — but to a large extent there were far more losses than gains. No one ‘got it right’, but we can leave it to the coming years of academic and media interpretations to chew that one over.

One thing above all that has been seen during this crisis is the retreat behind borders. Even in the ‘ever closer union’ of the European Union, border closures were seen in the earliest stages of the pandemic. Member states took very different approaches to the control of the disease based on national and political interests, rather than those of a humanitarian nature. This has resulted in the ridiculous league table on deaths and comparisons of who ‘did it right’ and who ‘did it wrong’. The tragedy of hundreds of thousands of deaths and the, as yet not fully understood, long term consequences of this disease is not a national concern, but one that affects the whole of the human race.

We are as yet to see the last act of this played out of course, on the discovery of a vaccine and effective treatment. Already nations states have been jockeying to ensure they get ‘their’ share and some even prioritise patents over patients. The philosophy of market competition will not work here. The vaccine must be available to all equally or it is no use at all.

The world has cooperated before to fight disease. In 1977 the very last natural infection of Smallpox was recorded in Somalia. A co-ordinated effort led by the World Health Organisation eradicated a disease that ravaged every community on the planet and killed 30% of those who caught it. One of the most remarkable features of that program was that belligerents in wars put down their guns temporarily to pick up hypodermic syringes. Sadly, it was only temporary but it demonstrated that the process of eliminating a threat to all humanity could transcend tribalism and ideology.

As the COVID-19 crisis attenuates, people in the UK may have noticed that the Brexit debate is creeping back into the attention of the press. Within a few weeks it will, of course, be dominant again. No-deal cliff edges will be the existential threat rather than coronaviruses. Our economy already severely damaged will be facing a new threat of trade chaos between the UK and EU. If anything is now clear in the world economy, it is that confrontation is the last thing anybody can afford. Even those states who the press and media suggest to us got COVID-19 ‘right’ are in for a rough ride.

The COVID-19 crisis will be with us for long after the virus itself has been controlled. The crisis is now one of economic recovery and how best to achieve it. It is very clear that none of the world’s economies, now all on the ropes, have the energy to go back into the ring to slug it out. It’s time to co-operate and forget conflict. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place.

Barry Turner is a Senior Lecturer in War Reporting and Human Rights and a member of the Royal United Services Institute.