Powered by love (or a rhyming paraphrase of a letter, written by Russel Brand, to Boris Johnson.

“Powered by love”

Dear Boris, now that you’re recovering,

I, quite touched when I saw you nearly cry,

Have written a letter, not expecting

At all that I’ll ever get a reply:

When you gave your statement upon discharge,

Seeing your humanity looming large;

Observing your tearful sincerity;

I fancied you had an epiphany,

And wondered, how can a party, led by you,

Ever again talk privatisation,

Rescind funding, without hesitation,

And cut welfare, health and social care too?

The NHS is “Powered by love”, you said;

Will you take then, another path instead?

I genuinely felt, perhaps naïvely,  

You meant what you said when generously,

You praised the nurses, but specifically,

One Portuguese and another, Kiwi,

Then, I wondered, did you, knowing full well,

The Guardian with a story to tell,

Would very happily jump at the chance

To disparage somehow, your Brexit stance;

Did you, knowing as I say, hence decide,

The best thing to do is put on a show

And being explicit, from the get go

Was preferable to being decried;

Pre-empting as it were the front page news,

Of outlets with less sympathetic views?

Also, (though I’m not a cynical man)

When you keep repeating “Our NHS”

It’s like you and Cummings have forged a plan,

To drive home a message you want to press:

Functioning like a synecdoche,

Around a national identity,

The NHS, being a deity,

Entails governmental authority.

In other words, what better way is there

To achieve unassailable power,

Than having a pantheon; a sacred cow

To rally round in a time of despair;

You all the while hence retaining more hold,

Growing in stature, and ever more bold?

Being medically necessary,

The NHS can be used in a way,

That assists power, indefinitely.

I guess what I’m really trying to say

Is, we love the NHS, completely;

It’s like a secular Virgin Mary,

A loving and yet tortured matriarch,

A shadow to an overt patriarch,

That dominates and usually abides:

What else could the NHS ever be

Other than female; a definite, SHE;

Caring while HE tolerates and decides?

Or could it just be my cynicism,    

Competing against my optimism?

So I suppose my point is, publicity;

i.e. the public face of government,

Involves strategy and duplicity;

A truth and information management.

Up until this pandemic, you must know,

Faith in MPs was at an all-time low,

And now, many of us in this present mess,

See opportunities to reassess

Our values, our cares, our priorities,

And one day, some kind of normality 

Will return and our lives again will be,

Determined by the four formalities:

Business, profit, power and control;

Four things that seemingly make up the whole.

 I’m not a cynic, I believe in love,

Optimism, ability to change,

Humanity, goodness, and God above

And being a cynic, for me, is strange.

My prayer to you Boris Johnson is,

When your post demands a return to this:

The four formalities in the last verse,

You’ll recall the names of every nurse,

And also the vulnerability,

The humility that comes with sickness,

And that, on either side of this crisis,

Suffering and fear are a constancy:

A backdrop to many now living here,

Including nurses that we all hold dear.

For the NHS, you, your family

And all of us; I now end this letter

With a prayer, and I say sincerely:

I’m glad you’re better

Boris

Stay better.

Love ********