As the fireworks raced into sky to mark the beginning of a new decade, most of us probably felt that, after four years of turmoil, we had reached a point of certainty 18 days earlier with the election of Boris Johnson and an 80-seat majority. Within days, though, initial reports were making their way out of China of a new disease that was spreading and killing at an alarming rate.
As we enjoyed the late May bank holiday sun, many of us on a beach, there was a feeling the storm that was Covid-19, if not over, was passed it worse. Finally, we may have felt, we could look forward to that period of certainty once again. But that evening, in Minnesota, George Floyd was stopped by the police for allegedly using a counterfeit dollar bill. His death, at the hands of those police echoed around the world, and 8:46 will come to have as much resonance as 9/11 had almost 20 years previously.
Either one of these events would likely have changed our world. Together, they have made it essential. Together, they have laid bare just how inadequate is our system of government, and those who seek to govern us.
Together they demand change.