SOARING prices and collapsing living standards dominate the political scene, drowning out coverage of the public inquiry into Covid-19 that began today.

But the issues the probe will consider are of direct relevance to the headline topics at Conservative Party conference: tax rates, benefit levels, public spending.

A 24-7 news cycle can effortlessly move from one crisis to the next, masking the connections between them — and even the fact that “last year’s news” might be ongoing. 

Coronavirus hospitalisations in Britain have risen in recent weeks, while Big Pharma’s successful blocking of a global vaccine patent waiver — facilitated by wrecking tactics at the World Trade Organisation by a small coterie of capitalist states, Britain prominent among them — means that the chance of some dangerous new variant evolving remains significant.

A highly partisan and myopic mass media, uninterested in comparing Covid impacts across different countries, has given the Tories a free pass on the 170,000 deaths the virus caused in Britain and even continues to mock countries that adopted a zero-Covid strategy aimed at suppressing outbreaks, though these have performed better both in public health and economic terms. 

British people are about 270 times more likely to have died from Covid than Chinese people for example.

A damning indictment of — what exactly?

Government decisions — but not just those. Britain’s Covid death rate has been very high by international standards, but the experience was similar in most Western capitalist countries. 

Callous laissez-faire approaches from Boris Johnson and Donald Trump contributed to the deaths, but more sober-minded governments in Paris and Berlin did not fare much better. 

What the awful performance of developed capitalist countries indicates is the consequence of decades of neoliberalism: hollowed-out public services, extreme inequality, widespread job insecurity and the ineptitude of states that have switched from providing services to commissioning them when faced with a national emergency.

Engaged government connected to communities through local democracy can mobilise quickly, as we saw in the Indian Communist-run state of Kerala, which easily arranged house-to-house visits to ensure people forced to isolate were given proper support, assistance with deliveries of food and other essentials.

As Morning Star columnist Solomon Hughes has detailed, Britain’s equivalent was to pay a fortune to a private firm to set up a helpline, which it, predictably, staffed with untrained minimum-wage recruits who were not even in a position to provide accurate advice on the help allegedly available.

The state’s response to Covid showcased its inability to do anything effectively except divert public money into the pockets of chancers who claimed, untruthfully, to be able to deliver the services wanted.

Other fundamental weaknesses in our social order were exposed, too. The agency staff who unwittingly spread Covid from care home to care home showed the dangers in rampant outsourcing. So too did the agency-employed hospital cleaners forced to show up for work when sick because they lacked sick-pay rights.

And the horror stories that emerged from the NHS — with nurses covering up in bin bags due to a lack of protective equipment and forced to work impossible hours due to chronic short-staffing — indicated a health service seriously weakened by underfunding, one which is now faced with a treatment waiting list six million people long.

When the Tories debate whether to hold benefits below inflation, remember how poverty drove the spread of the virus.

When they talk about £18 billion cuts to public services, remember how our NHS struggled to cope and is still struggling.

When they try to sell us — for the millionth time — their moonshine about market efficiency, remember the private-sector parasites who charged us a fortune for a pig in a poke.

We need to reverse the policies that brought us 170,000 Covid deaths. Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng are trying to accelerate them.