New Order’s Bernard Sumner makes impassioned political statement
In a rare post on the New Order website, frontman Bernard Sumner addressed the current state of affairs in the UK, targeting Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government and many of its recent actions.
Sumner knows better than to become embroiled in political matters, but desperate times call for desperate measures. “I don’t normally post much and don’t normally post about stuff like this – but I do care about it,” he stated, introducing his post.
Firstly, the singer targeted the government’s recent decision to overhaul Personal Independence Payments for people with mental health issues. The New Order founder described the decision as a “disgusting way to cut costs.”
He opined that it was most likely “an attempt to recoup some of the money they wasted on ineffective personal protective equipment (PPE) during the Covid pandemic,” which he deems “a scandalous waste of money.”
Sumner quoted some figures from the government’s own analyses of the Covid-19 pandemic. “The Department for Health & Social Care (DHSC) lost 75% of the £12 billion it spent on PPE in the first year of the pandemic to inflated prices and kit that did not meet the required standards,” he wrote, “including fully £4 billion of PPE that will never be used by the NHS and needs to be disposed of.”
He added that this wasted money will now have to be recouped ironically at the expense of the “sick and vulnerable”. Sumner noted: “That figure is now £14.9 billion, and the Government are claiming it as part of their investment in the NHS figures.”
Finally, Sumner addressed the shortcomings of Brexit, claiming that the majority of British people don’t want it anymore. “We are enduring yet more of the same old attitude when it’s been obvious for a long time now that Brexit is an abject failure. According to opinion polls, ‘the British people’ – to quote the Tories’ constant patronising justification – categorically do not want Brexit any more,” he argued, “so why are they all pretending everything is OK as far as ‘the British people’ are concerned when, clearly, it isn’t?”
This argument targets the Rwanda bill that was passed through parliament last week. The bill intends to send some asylum seekers to the African country to discourage hazardous crossings of the English Channel.
“There are no benefits, only downsides that so far have cost the UK economy an estimated £140 billion, and then there’s Rwanda,” Sumner argues. “If Brexit hadn’t happened, Rwanda wouldn’t be happening.”
He concluded his address to the British government by striking off the Conservatives and giving Labour a boot up the backside: “In my opinion, the Tories should vacate the premises, and Labour should get its act together and show us they have the courage required to govern effectively.”
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