I’ve been an MP for 19 years and I’ve never known such a strange variety of questions pour into my inbox (aka my Facebook page). In March they were largely questions about children with separated parents. Could they visit both homes? That was easy, because the rules were very clear – or at least they were once the first government minister to get them wrong on Radio 4’s Today programme corrected himself 10 minutes later.
Now the questions are infinitely varied. One constituent wants to know about golf clubs. Another asks whether he can go fishing. And if so, is he allowed to drive to the lake? After all, he’s allowed to drive to the garden centre so why not the lake? Or what about if he drove to the lake on the way to the garden centre? Another asks whether she has to go to work if she doesn’t have childcare – and dozens wonder whether they can legally refuse to work if their husband/wife/nan/child is shielding, or if they don’t have a car, or their employer can’t guarantee social distancing? That’s without mentioning the requests for advice on wearing masks, washing clothes, home-teaching six-year-olds and the best alcohol level in hand-sanitiser. Lots expressly ask me for permission in writing to do what they want to do – or a letter they can show to their next-door neighbour forbidding them from doing what they don’t think their neighbours should be doing.
It’s not surprising people are looking for certainty. Vagueness and incompetence haven’t inspired trust and with so much of normal life turned upside down people are genuinely fearful for their jobs, their health, their livelihood and their way of life. The very sight of so many people dying (in the old-fashioned but apt phrase) “before their time” has posed horrible questions – not least about the way we treat older people – and those who once thought themselves safe are now worried.
But Boris Johnson is right about one thing. No government can micro-manage every minute element of the loosening of lockdown that must eventually come. It’s easy to tug the corset on. You just pull and pull on the drawstrings. It’s much tougher to loosen your corset with decorum.
And the truth is that as we come out of this we are all going to have to live with a far higher degree of uncertainty. We will have to rely on our own judgment in our daily life and learn to assess risk and minimise danger without endlessly fretting.
That is not going to be easy. Mathematics teachers tell me that probability is one of the most difficult things to teach or for the human brain to compute. We see a possible danger and flee, even if the chances of the danger realising itself are infinitesimal. But we will have to learn how to take sensible precautions but live with the unpredictability of life.
The poet Keats had a phrase for this. He said that great people had a “negative capability”, that is to say they were “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason”. I know it sounds a bit like Kipling (“if you can keep your head while all about you are losing theirs” etc) but there’s an important difference. Of course we should establish the facts and listen to the experts, but we shall be paralysed as individuals and as a nation if we seek certainty all the time. A life well-lived has to accept and embrace the chaos around us.
This isn’t a call for rugged individualism. The “herd immunity” idea was a dangerous fallacy. Nor do I subscribe to the idea that there’s a choice between the physical and financial health of the nation. But at some point each of us will have to make a difficult decision for ourselves without a politician’s say-so, just as we always did.
I take three lessons from this. First, the government needs to factor into its thinking how it can help people assess risk and minimise danger more accurately and realistically.
Second, the hyper-astute among you will have noticed that I referred to “government minister” back at the beginning without specifying what kind of government minister. That’s because I’m a Welsh MP and the four governments’ inability to sing from the same hymn-sheet has made life yet more complicated. So, half the time I’m explaining the difference – or the similarity – between England and Wales. It’s been driving lots of us insane that the prime minister – and virtually every other Westminster minister from the chancellor down – endlessly speaks as if devolution had never taken place. BBC News presenter Huw Edwards now seems to have taken to saying, “in England” after each announcement with especial glee, but ever since this started I’ve wished for a little symbol that could appear on your screen saying, “England-only” or “UK-wide” or “please ignore, this doesn’t apply to you”, as I know that the moment the news is over my constituents will take to the ether with the same plaintive question: “Does that apply to us?”
Finally, I’m not giving people “permission” any more. I’m not an employment lawyer, a police officer, a social worker, a doctor or a chemist. Yes, I’ll point people to the most recent advice from the Welsh and UK governments, I’ll try to help people with their problems and I’ll make their case in the Commons. But I’m buffing up my negative capability and learning to live with uncertainty.
• Chris Bryant is the Labour MP for Rhondda
