SPECIATOR
The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WCIN 2LL Telephone: 020-7405 1706; Fax 020-7242 0603
IS THERE A PLAN B?
The common charge that the government is made up of 'control freaks' may be just a touch unfair. It is becoming obvious that our leaders' concept of control varies considerably from that of the rest of us. When Nick Brown talks of foot-and-mouth disease being 'under control' he means that it is being maintained as an epidemic rather than a scourge.
Initially, we were told that the crunch would come in the middle of the week beginning 5 March; if new cases had peaked by then, it would indicate that the ban on movement of animals introduced two weeks earlier had been successful. Once those afflicted had been slaughtered, no further animals would be afflicted because the incubation period of the disease is just two weeks. Plainly, crunch time has come and gone, and foot-and-mouth is running rife. In the past week, cases of the disease have doubled to more than 200, and the area of affliction has spread to encompass most districts of Britain.
There will come a time when the government has to admit that, however much it may feel that the public presentation of its handling of the crisis may be under control, the disease itself isn't. Not to admit that opens the government up to broadsides like that issued by Hugh Byrne, Ireland's minister for marine and natural resources. A visitor dropping in from Asia, he said, would conclude that it was Ireland, not Britain, which was suffering an epidemic of foot-and-mouth. While in Britain country walks are off but pleasure drives on, Crufts off but racing on, across St George's Channel, all racing, all angling, all sporting events have been banned, local council meetings have been cancelled, rural worshippers are staying away from Mass and even this week's St Patrick's Day parades have been called off — without a single case of foot-and-mouth diagnosed.
This is not to say that the Irish approach of total quarantine would be appropriate here. In rural Ireland. agriculture is still the mainstay of the economy; while in Britain agriculture is dwarfed by tourism, let alone by the other industries that abut pastures in our very fragmented rural landscape. We cannot keep animals apart from humans, and we cannot stop humans travelling about the country. But it does make the government look half-hearted and inept in its chosen policy of trying to contain the disease. This is one area in which the Middle Way equates to the worst of all worlds: rural bedand-breakfasts are being crippled without any benefit to farmers.
What is alarming about the government's handling of the crisis is the seeming lack of a Plan B. Perhaps we will be proved wrong and one is secretly being hatched in the bowels of Whitehall, which will be revealed to the nation shortly after we go to press, but at the moment it seems as if Mr Brown has no ideas other than to continue slaughtering, either until the disease goes away or there is not a single farm animal left in Britain, whichever is the sooner. Mr Brown is going to have to address the question: how far does he intend to pursue a policy of destruction which it was envisaged would affect only a few isolated groups of animals? With a million sheep said to be facing slaughter, at what point does it become more economic to abandon our pretence of being a foot-and-mouth-free island, get out the vaccine still being kept under lock and key, and face up to a future in which farm animals will suffer from foot-and-mouth just as human beings suffer from flu? Does Mr Brown know the answer to this fundamental question, and, if not, why hasn't he instructed his minions to find out the answer?
The Tories have spent this week umming and ahhing over whether to cry foul over Mr Blair's insistence on having an election while foot-and-mouth is still raging. They would be foolish to show anything other than enthusiasm for a poll on 3 May: remember how Labour's 1983 campaign was derailed before it began when Denis Healey moaned about Mrs Thatcher's plan to 'cut and run'. She put him down with the words: 'So the gentleman's afraid of a general election, is he?' But if they were to come up with some better ideas on footand-mouth, they may find that after six more weeks of mindless slaughter, the public might find them irresistible.
While the cows are going down with foot-and-mouth, humans have caught another dreadful affliction: red-nose disease. The symptoms are as follows: otherwise rational people are persuaded that giving to charity is an excuse to demean themselves. They insist in going about as clowns in the most inappropriate situations: one year a barrister was offended that the judge asked him to remove his red nose in court. Television schedules fill up with third-rate slapstick.
Without wishing to question the worthiness of the causes involved, what is wrong with the old-fashioned collection tin? Is it that too much of the money put in a tin would actually find its way to the poor and not enough benefit would accrue to the celebs, PR people and television producers who thrive on Comic Relief?
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