CRISES — especially unexpected ones — force a rupture in the veil of hypocrisy that routinely characterises the public utterances of our ruling class and its media outriders.

That declining organ of conservative opinion the Daily Telegraph — whose readers, if its advertising content is any indication, have more need of mobility aids and incontinence pads than adventure holidays — gave us a striking example last week.

The paper’s assistant editor commented: “Not to put too fine a point on it, from an entirely disinterested economic perspective the Covid-19 might even prove mildly beneficial in the long term by disproportionately culling elderly dependents.”

To put this chilling passage in context, the most recent statistics show that 18.9 per cent of the British population is 65 years and over — that is 5,321,392 men and 6,518,939 women.

This naturally raises the question in this questioning mind of what a Tory propagandist might consider a “proportionate culling” of the elderly readers of his newspaper.

Last year saw the Telegraph sales decline by 12 per cent. I doubt its owners would consider the paper’s terminal decline at all beneficial, although others might.

The multibillionaire Barclay brothers — the magnates who most recently acquired ownership of this failing organ — are themselves well into their 80s and fall directly into the category of persons most likely to experience the beneficial culling that their employee regards with such equanimity.

Perhaps they are reassured by their relative isolation from contagion as they dwell, securely and unencumbered by the taxes that pay for our NHS, on their private Channel Island.

In a moment of contrition, the Telegraph writer regretted the infelicitous use of the word “cull” but remained unrepentant about the economic point he was trying make: “Any thinning out of those of prime working age is a much bigger supply shock than the same thing among elderly retirees.”

It is rare that a scribe in the service of the bosses distills the anti-human essence of bourgeois ideology with such clarity although, in his favour, he at least has a primitive grasp of Marx’s labour theory of surplus value.

The probable outcome of the coronavirus strategy followed by HM government is a matter of debate. What started as a fairly relaxed approach is, episode by episode, being ratcheted up to more closely resemble that taken by other European and developed capitalist states, the US presently excepted.

Panic buying tells us much about the distinctive national psyches: toilet paper in Britain, pasta in Italy, guns in the US.

The news that Mexico is considering imposing a ban on the entry of travellers from the US provides an ironic counterpoint to Trump’s constant demonising of what was the junior partner in Nafta and is now excluded from the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement that succeeded it.

This serves as a useful reminder that economic treaties between capitalist states are grounded more in the amoral universe they share with the Daily Telegraph than any more charitable or sisterly impulses.

We have been given striking illustration of this by the failure of any EU member state to respond adequately to Italy’s plea for aid in tackling its Covid-19 epidemic.

“Italy has already asked to activate the EU mechanism of civil protection for the supply of medical equipment for individual protection. But, unfortunately, not a single EU country responded to the Commission’s call,” said Italy’s EU ambassador Maurizio Massari. “Only China responded bilaterally.”

On Friday March 13 the Chinese sent a plane with nine doctors and nine pallets containing 32 tons of medical equipment. This included intensive care unit equipment, medical protective equipment, antiviral drugs and the first 40 pulmonary ventilators of a bigger consignment, while a Chinese truck arrived bringing another 230 boxes of medical equipment.

It is not that the various institutions of European solidarity were totally ignorant of Italy’s predicament.

European Central Bank boss Christine Lagarde went on record to say that the ECB is “not here to close spreads” between the borrowing costs of EU member states. This sent Italian bond yields spiralling higher and triggered a 17 per cent fall on the Milan stock exchange.

The effect of this entirely predictable assertion of the ECB’s role in policing “fiscal responsibility” was to throw each member state on its own resources in dealing with not only the coronavirus crisis but the more permanent crisis of the EU’s political institutions.

The foundation of this lies in the economic imbalances which, for the Germany-centred bloc, are the raison d’etre of the eurozone. Its southern states have less capacity to weather crises of these magnitudes and the resultant economic destabilisation is already producing new stresses in the political superstructure.

The coherence of the eurozone depends upon Italy — and other states in a similar situation — retaining the capacity to maintain and even stimulate enough domestic growth to service their debt burdens. The prospect of the ECB’s highly conditional support being withdrawn has sent Italy’s notoriously pro-EU political class into a crisis of disappointed expectations.

The so-called “centre left” in Italy — grouped around the fractious Partito Democratico — is wholly invested in the EU. Its political adversaries, both its government partner Movimento Cinque Stella and the Lega, have a populist EU-critical identity, although in both government and opposition both have moderated their critical tone and adjusted their policies to fall more in line.
These issues are central to Italian politics.