by VINAY LAL
Earlier this year, newspapers reported an unusual development in Britain before the subject of the story was quickly orphaned. Considering that the British Prime Minister, Theresa May, and her ministers have the lofty and calamitous matter of Brexit on their minds, it is a wonder that anything else gets reported at all. According to the Guardian and the New York Times, Ms. May has appointed a “Minister of Loneliness”. It has been said that those who wield power at the very top are generally lonely: as the example of Donald Trump suggests, the strong man always expects the unyielding loyalty of his inferiors and the slightest deviation from that norm puts the offender under suspicion. It is not only dictators or autocrats who have few, if any, friends. Many have sought to augment the reputation of Winston Churchill by suggesting that at critical moments in the conduct of the war against Nazi Germany, the British Prime Minister cut a very lonely figure. Churchill’s heroism, as it is described by some of his admirers, can never be appreciated by those who fail to recognize how he relied only on his strength and indomitable will power in the face of resistance from his own cabinet colleagues.
It is, of course, not this kind of loneliness that Prime Minister May had in mind when she appointed Tracey Crouch “Minister of Loneliness”. Strictly speaking, Ms. Crouch is the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Sport and Civil Society, having previously served as the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Sport, Tourism, and Heritage. Ms. Crouch’s present brief includes the portfolios not just for sport and civil society, but also lotteries, horse racing, gambling, and, since January 2018, “loneliness”. This entire list is itself worthy of comment, but let it pass for the moment. In announcing Ms. Crouch’s new responsibilities, Prime Minister Theresa May deplored the fact that “for far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life”, and she went on to say: “I want to confront this challenge for our society and for all of us to take action to address the loneliness endured by the elderly, by carers, by those who have lost loved ones — people who have no one to talk to or share their thoughts and experiences with.”
The Prime Minister’s comments appear to have been prompted by the release, late last year, of a report from the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness, named after the Member of Parliament who was murdered by a white supremacist in 2016. The Commission found that, in Britain, 9 million people, or around 14% of the population, described themselves as always or often lonely. Nearly 52% of parents had experienced a “problem with loneliness” in the past, and 21% had felt lonely at some point in the previous week. Among those who are at least 75 years old, one in three stated that “feelings of loneliness are out of their control”, and among the disabled and care givers the feeling of loneliness was similarly very high.
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