Until this March, those who did some of the lowest-paid jobs were deemed essential. Now they are treated as disposable
Two deadly mutant virus variants rampaging across the country. Schools in disarray. Kent morphed into a giant lorry park. The hours ticking down to a chaotic Brexit that could snap the supply chains delivering food to our shelves. Were Labour running what other countries now call Plague Island, the right’s politicians and press would be bellowing about Another Winter of Discontent. With Boris Johnson in charge, however, the response is a numb anxiety.
Yet even as the headlines chronicle a national system being tested to destruction, the reporting rarely features people who can show from their own lives how the system actually works – or doesn’t. People like Erika.