Yahoo News Terrorists are losers, not monsters. We mustn't suspend our election because of them
How should politics react to the Manchester attack? It has become customary in recent times that, when such terrorist atrocities occur during an election campaign, the campaign is suspended for a period. Following the terrible murder of Jo Cox MP, campaigning for the EU referendum was suspended for 48 hours. In response to the Manchester attack, campaigning for the general election has been suspended too, with some suggestions that that suspension might last until the weekend. But is this the right thing to do?
Politics is not a game. It can be fun. It involves larger-than-life characters, publicity stunts, rousing speeches, comical one-liners, silly posters, colourful rosettes. But it is not a branch of the entertainment industry, some frivolity that we should put aside when important and urgent matters come up.
Donald Trump reacted to the Manchester attack by saying that he would not give the terrorists the satisfaction of calling them “monsters”. They would like that idea – a monster, a thing of terror to frighten us. Instead, he said that from now on he would call them “losers”. Well said, that man. That’s what they are: losers. Jealous of the innocent fun of young girls. Frightened of their own desires and too ill-disciplined to tame them. Finding so little joy in life that they want to die to deny joy to others.
As I write, we know little of whoever was responsible for the Manchester attacks, but frequently in the past the perpetrators have been losers in life: drug and drink problems; beating up their wives; divorced and alienated from their parents or children; rejected in their sexual advances or unable to come to terms with their own sexuality; failed at school; lost their jobs; bankrupt.
Precisely because they are losers and know they lack the personal resolve to turn it all around, they jump at the chance to set it all right in a moment of mayhem, heaven beckoning as the reward for murder, thereby proving themselves losers once again, exploited intellectually and morally by a wildly implausible and childish moral and spiritual calculus.
And their acts cannot change anything real in our civilisation unless we make that change by our reaction. Some dozens dead and dozens more injured is a horrible outrage. But it is not an existential threat to us.
Our political leaders may need to set aside their normal affairs for an hour or two while they are briefed on events and query officials on whether policy must change – much as they would if dozens had been killed in a train crash. In the area surrounding the events, political campaigning might need to stop, along with other parts of commercial and civil life, so as to allow the police to do their job.
Furthermore, it is proper that we pause a moment to reflect and mourn, and indeed recover. I am not usually a fan of mawkishness, but I must confess that when I reflect on all those young people in the midst of the most innocent joyful fun reduced to panicked flight or in horrible pain from wounds or with their lives ended, and all deliberately, and all for nothing, my composure is threatened. I well. I am angry. Our political leaders and their officials are no less human than I. This is not a good state in which to make decisions, whether about the Manchester attacks or, indeed, about other unrelated political questions that might arise in the heat of an election campaign.
So, a local suspension of political campaigning in relevant parts of Manchester to let the police do their work is right. And a more general brief pause to reflect and recover is right also.
But then – after a few hours, a day at most (probably less) – we should get back to the election campaign in its full heat. We have crucial decisions to make as a country about our future. How will Brexit be negotiated? Will there be a second referendum on the outcome of the Brexit negotiations?
How should our economy be managed? How much debt should we take on, how much tax should we pay? Should we continue to have nuclear weapons? Should our regulated industries continue as private companies or should they be nationalised? Should social care costs be subject to a cap and, if so, how much?
The terrorists want us to think they are important. They want to disrupt our lives, especially our political lives. But they are losers. We should not grant them the satisfaction. Politics must go on.
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