This article originally appeared in our Elevenses newsletter.
Good morning. Pity CS Lewis and Aldous Huxley. For these two great English writers, without whom we would have no Brave New World nor any of The Chronicles of Narnia, both passed away on 22 November 1963: the same day John F Kennedy was assassinated. Spare a thought too for Sergei Prokofiev, the Russian composer of ballet Romeo and Juliet. He had the misfortune to die on the same March 1953 day as Joseph Stalin. Great men, each of whom left an indelible mark on modern society – their passings subsumed by the deaths of still greater men.
What, you are entitled to wonder, is my point? It is almost one full month since Vladimir Putin began his assault on Ukraine. Quite understandably given its seismic ramifications, war in eastern Europe has eclipsed almost every other event vying for the attention of public and press. Take Partygate – a scandal which, just weeks ago, felt similarly all-consuming. When civilians are being shelled in Kyiv and Mariupol, the Sue Gray report suddenly feels a little less urgent.
That isn’t to say stuff like Partygate doesn’t matter – it does, and Boris Johnson will likely still feel its consequences when election-time comes around. Yet it has undoubtedly slid down the list of this country’s most pressing problems. That is, to a certain extent, inevitable. We all have limited bandwidth; it is simply impossible to care passionately about all things at all times. It just might be that Partygate has become the CS Lewis to Ukraine’s JFK.
These ghastly times in which we live have created an interesting, real-time experiment into what can break through the dark clouds created by Putin’s invasion and what can not. Some things – like Partygate and, more worryingly, the climate crisis – seem to have fallen by the wayside. But one issue that will be incredibly difficult for the government to ignore, despite the war, is the cost-of-living crisis. Our collective bandwidth may be limited, but you can bet we all still notice when we’re getting whacked in the pocket.
It’s no surprise, then, that the government has sought to conflate the two. Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, recently claimed that this country’s hardships “are nothing compared to those endured by the people of Ukraine… In Britain, and around the world, we’re prepared to suffer economic sacrifices to support you, however long it takes.” Kwasi Kwarteng, the business secretary, was more explicit: “People are willing to endure hardships in solidarity with the heroic efforts that the people of Ukraine are making.” The logic goes: the cost-of-living crisis is a result of the war, and you diminish the suffering of the Ukrainian people by moaning about it.
That’s complete bollocks, of course. Long before Russian tanks rolled in, British families were facing a horrendous combination of higher prices, lower wages, higher taxes and lower benefits. And it was the British government that made that nightmare worse – cutting Universal Credit, approving an eye-watering rise to the energy price cap and landing working people with a back-breaking National Insurance increase.
As Money Saving Expert founder Martin Lewis recently pointed out, we are witnessing a “deliberate narrative shift, that effectively says the entire cost-of-living crisis is due to Ukraine, and therefore we all need to make sacrifices. And that is not correct.” Whether Brits are willing and able to make that same distinction remains to be seen.
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