It is when under stress that the weaknesses of any system are exposed, and boy is our society under stress just now.

Coronavirus will push our health, social care, political and economic systems to their limits. There is much talk of an almost wartime economy, where essentially all productive capacity is aimed at defeating the enemy, and politicians with one eye on the history books making pleas to patriotism.

My instinctive wariness of the patriotism card being played and of the present crop of political leaders who choose to play it is something I cannot shake, and one which I must separate from the call for all to do their bit to beat this.

The leadership through this crisis has hardly been stellar. A snap general election in December, followed by the entire Whitehall apparatus being focussed on an arbitrary exit date from the EU in January certainly didn’t make for ideal preparation. When the chancellor stood at the despatch box to declare that he and his government would do whatever it took to get the country through this, it was broadly welcomed, as were the wage subsidies offered to keep people’s personal finances afloat during the crisis as well as the businesses they work for. 

The elephant in the room of course is austerity. It has cut or stretched capacity in the public sector to breaking point and beyond. Relentless and remorseless, the Tories have waged war on public services, on those who rely on them, those who work in them and, most heinously of all, on benefit claimants.

Four years ago, I held a role at Glasgow City Council which essentially left me as political lead for the response to welfare reform. The task seemed huge, and with every year council budgets being cut by the SNP, it was a case of make-do-and-mend alongside searching for relatively inexpensive things that could make a big difference to the lives of those living with poverty.

The tide felt very much against us. By the end of 2016 I realised that I’d spent almost a decade arguing against welfare ‘reforms,’ and trying to defend the welfare state that was not up to scratch in the first place. It was time to take a step back.

The result was the proposal to trial ‘Universal Basic Income’ (UBI) in Glasgow, and most encouraging of all was that it seemed many of us in local authorities had come to the same conclusion independently of one another.

The concept that every citizen – in or out of work – is given a regular payment from the state couldn’t be further from the system we now inhabit. People the length and breadth of our land are regularly put through all sorts of hoops, many of which are designed to discourage and demean just to have the means to have the basics – food, shelter, and heat. Layer on top of this a punitive sanctions regime, and you have the makings for a Kafkaesque system that sends out the message very clearly, not that you matter, but that you are a burden.

It seems to me that it could provide genuine security in people’s lives alongside good universal services (it’s not an either/or) at a time of great economic change in the coming years, and give people breathing space. Past pilots have shown that people stay longer in education, that those dealing with domestic violence are more likely to escape it, and yes, some choose to work fewer hours.

Naturally, the idea has its detractors. Some claim it could drive down wages (handing economic power to workers like this, in my view, would do the opposite), or that it would disincentivise work (even when it would ensure working would always increase income), or that it isn’t affordable.

I would argue that we cannot afford not to, that to leave people behind as automation accelerates would be a crime. So would a failure to properly tax automated assets, and hold them in common ownership.

Thoughts of automation, and even thoughts of how degrading our present systems of support are, often don’t resonate with those not face to face with it; but this is changing. This crisis has forced many to confront economic questions – five million self-employed workers face the prospect of little or no income for months, many find themselves on Statutory Sick Pay, people navigate the universal credit system for the first time, or workers are simply laid off by employers not willing to wait for government wage support.

The call has gone out for a UBI, and not just from those of us converted to the cause some time ago, but instead from many whom – at the very least – see the benefit in it as a temporary measure. 

I can understand why they have, on a temporary basis at least, been won to the idea. We need to put money in people’s pockets and fast if we are to not only avoid an economic collapse, but a further humanitarian disaster, on top of the carnage the virus is directly causing in communities across the land. Why then not do it? It seems our elites worry that once the public have had a taste of the state guaranteeing a minimum standard of living, they may like it – and that would never do.

A little lack of trust in government is not a bad thing, but what we see in our land now goes well beyond that. It is not simply about a failure of leadership in the present crisis, or the confused messages it has sent – it goes much deeper. 

For decades working people have been told by government that they are on their own, that they aren’t important enough to have security of employment or of home, told by media that ‘they’ are all the same, that government action cannot work and is somehow inherently inefficient or malevolent; and that need is not enough, but they must prove themselves morally worthy of support. Why is anyone surprised at the lack of faith, and who benefits from it?

We will emerge from this crisis a different country. What should it look like? The present prime minister models himself on a wartime leader. During that war effort the state demonstrated what it was capable of when mobilised. At the end of it, people desired something better than had gone before – they understood what could be achieved if a war effort could be directed to building the NHS, or hundreds of thousands of homes, or slaying the ‘five giants’.

When we beat this virus, through collective effort and will, it must not only be our task to turn that collective effort to rebuilding our services so that we are never caught out again. But it must also be to build on the experience, the anger and the heartache and turn it to the future – as a society ready to face it, together.