Vox pop plumber Ryan Price speaks for Britain outside the Twitter bubble
Stop what you’re doing. It’s happened – Channel 4 News accidentally interviewed a normal person last night. Ryan Price, a plumber from Surrey, was asked for his opinion on Boris Johnson’s Sunday evening speech, in which the Prime Minister unveiled his government’s blueprint to bring Britain out of the coronavirus lockdown.
Ryan told his interviewers:
“Boris is sort of leaving it up to us a little bit…you know, if you feel safe to do so then do it. It’s not really hard to understand…Be sensible in what you’re doing and stay away – 2 metres apart – when you can, wear your PPE if you’re at work. I mean I’m not sure, what do you want? A full handbook to tell you what to do?”
This was a breath of fresh air, a brief moment of vox pop gold in which common sense prevailed over the cartoonish hand-wringing of bored social media warriors searching frantically for the latest hot take. After a 24 hour barrage of complaints on Twitter that the government’s new measures to begin easing the lockdown are terribly confusing and complicated, Ryan brought some much-needed perspective.
Somewhere inside Channel 4’s management structure, someone will surely be demanding to know how this travesty came about. How on earth was an authentic voice allowed to express anything other than confected outrage at our nasty Tory overlords?
Don’t get me wrong – I know there were issues with the government’s presentation on Sunday. At times it swung between the witless worship of the “R” number and condescending graphics designed to make things clear to us little people. Ministers needed to fill in several gaps from workplace rules to looming questions on childcare. In one crucial omission of detail, Boris Johnson didn’t have the good sense to say when these new measures would come into force. Talk about making a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.
The Prime Minister was rightly asked for more information both in parliament and by members of the public yesterday. And yet at heart, the message wasn’t so complicated that someone watching Boris’s speech would have been unable grasp the fundamentals. The lockdown isn’t over, but you can now take greater discretion in exercising and meeting one person outside of your household so long as you maintain social distancing. If you cannot work from home and can get to work safely, then you should do so. If you cannot do so safely, don’t do it. It really is that simple.
Of course, further questions remain, but this is an unavoidable consequence of living in an uncertain time. A crisis does not, after all, lend itself to finely-tuned planning in every respect.
No doubt Ryan’s five minutes of fame were intended, like many vox pop sequences, to be a fleeting moment, a punter’s opinion which is no sooner watched than forgotten – a token homage to balance which is heard, but then quickly swapped for the safety of sanitised discussion in the newsroom studio.
Yet Ryan also touched on something which has been remarkable during this lockdown. His words are testament to an important trend which runs through our politics and public debate – a profound aversion to personal risk of any kind. There is a desire for technocracy, for some enlightened state to step in and manage the fine details of our lives rather than requiring us to take personal responsibility and use common sense; there is a yearning for the elimination of uncertainty, and for the protection from all shocks to health and wealth – even at an egregious cost to our personal liberties. Many do want to be told precisely what to do and how to act, and not only during a health emergency. In certain circles, freedom is out of fashion, authority is the order of the day.
Vox populi literally means “voice of the people”. Thankfully, there is no one “People” in this country and Britain does not speak with a single voice. That is the nature, and the purpose, of a pluralistic society. But the frustrations of plumber Ryan Price will surely have struck a chord with many beyond the nation’s media class.