Resignationism

There is an unfortunate trend in Britain’s politics which has coagulated into a rhetorical device — the latter used so often that it has congealed into reflex. It’s behind a few unfortunate recent cases, each of which have, in their own way, served to confuse, and to excite anger at precisely the most bottled-up and contorted moment of my life time.

All this has been directed by politicians, journalists, and performers in public life; it may yet hurt a great many of them, and cripple what limited usefulness they as a class have in dealing with the pandemic we all face.

That rhetorical device, whether in a newspaper column or a representative’s letter or a call shouted from one side of a legislature to another, is the injunction to resign.

Three examples, then, as we begin. They aren’t in themselves interesting, and may get a little dull. But they may do, for my purposes, as emblematic.

The first. Professor Neil Ferguson, of Imperial College London. Ferguson models disease and was a significant voice in the modelling of this disease. The team Ferguson leads charted the likely consequences of a series of public strategies, from doing nothing to doing everything conceivable, to restrict the way people were able to spread the virus and in so doing kill those around them.