It was Mario Cuomo, three term Governor of New York State, who liked to repeat, “You campaign in poetry; you govern in prose”. Writing in The New Yorker the day of Cuomo’s death, Elizabeth Kolbert noted that “His great gift—and it was an important one at the time—was to make listeners feel that politics was a serious business and that civic life matters.”
If only that were true today.
The present government in Westminster appears simply to rely on slogans. There is not much governing going on. This undoubtedly is a hangover from their successful Brexit campaign. But quite what the new slogan – “Stay alert. Control the virus. Save lives” – is meant to mean, is anyone’s guess. They clearly are as baffled as the rest of us, as having leaked the slogan, they then felt obliged to issue a 137 word statement to explain it.
The pandemic is serious, for each and every one of us. Civic life matters and civic responsibility is paramount. But you wouldn’t know it from our lords and masters. The overwhelming feeling is that we, the public, aren’t to be trusted with truth.
It is little surprise that our trust in government is ebbing fast.
Enough said: George Wilkinson's blog 