Where is the outrage over vaccine passports?
Our freedoms are being eroded with hardly any resistance.
As everyone by now knows, the government is considering increasing national-insurance contributions in order to fund the UK’s growing demand for adult social care. The leaked proposals have been impossible to miss. They have been making frontpage news for almost a week.
The proposed tax hike has caused outrage among backbench Conservative MPs, who complain that key election promises are being broken. It has united former Tory chancellor Philip Hammond and Labour leader Keir Starmer in opposition. Both argue that increasing national insurance – as opposed to raising other taxes – will hit the youngest and poorest hardest. Commentators have been out in force, arguing that the government’s plans breach an intergenerational contract and risk turning the UK into a gerontocracy.
All these criticisms have their merits. But what’s surprising in the current round of outrage over social-care funding is the sheer scale of pushback in comparison to other issues the UK is facing right now. While Tory MPs are busy fulminating in their WhatsApp groups and the Labour leader issues statements, yet more details have emerged about plans to introduce vaccine passports, which have met very little resistance.