So it has come to this. France, that bastion of civilisation and baguettes, has confirmed its first case of Ebola. And now, in a predictable frenzy of theatrical concern, the United Kingdom has declared its border security is on the “highest alert” to protect the mainland. Do not mistake this for sensible precaution. This is the political equivalent of a man who, having neglected his roof for years, suddenly panics at a single drop of rain.
We have seen this charade before. Every outbreak, every novel virus, every distant tremor of disease sends the British state into a paroxysm of performative vigilance. The aeroplanes are monitored. The passengers are screened. The press conferences are held. And yet, we all know the truth: that germs do not respect the Channel, that quarantine is a medieval fantasy in an age of global travel, and that the real crisis is not the virus itself but the intellectual decadence that has withered our capacity to respond with clarity.
Let us consider the historical parallel. In the late Roman Empire, the frontiers were guarded with elaborate fortifications, while the rot within became ever more pervasive. Similarly, our border security is a Potemkin village: impressive to the uninitiated, but ultimately useless against an enemy that slips through the countless capillaries of modern trade and tourism. We have built a Maginot Line against disease, and we shall be outflanked by a single asymptomatic carrier who coughs at a Heathrow baggage carousel.
The more profound question is not whether we can keep Ebola out, but why we have so little faith in our own resilience. The Victorians, for all their faults, did not cower in terror of cholera. They built sewers, purified water, and cleaned the streets. They understood that public health was a matter of infrastructure, not of keeping the foreigner at the gate. But we are no longer Victorians. We are late Romans, obsessed with spectacle and rhetoric, while the foundations crumble.
Consider the timing. This Ebola case emerges at a moment of maximum political fragility. The government is exhausted, the NHS is on its knees, and the public is gripped by a diffuse anxiety that attaches itself to any available object. The disease becomes a metaphor for the broader unease: the sense that things are slipping, that the centre cannot hold. The border security alert is thus not a response to a medical threat; it is a ritual incantation meant to ward off the evil spirits of instability.
I do not mean to minimise the seriousness of Ebola. It is a horrifying disease, with a case fatality rate that would make the Black Death blush. But the risk to the British public is vanishingly small, dwarfed by the risks we accept daily from influenza, obesity, and that most British of diseases: denial. The real danger is that our leaders will use this episode to justify ever more intrusive surveillance, ever more draconian restrictions, ever more expensive and ineffective border theatre. And the public, conditioned by decades of sensationalised media coverage, will cheer them on.
What is to be done? First, we must stop pretending that any nation can seal itself off. The world is a system, not a collection of hermetically sealed boxes. We should invest in global health infrastructure, not in pointless checks at Dover. Second, we must cultivate a stoic realism. The ancient Greeks understood that plague is a part of the human condition, to be managed with a combination of humility and courage, not hysteria and bluster. Third, we must ask ourselves what this panic reveals about our national character. Are we a people who can face adversity with fortitude, or are we a collection of nervous children jumping at shadows?
I suspect the answer is unwelcome. But then, my job is not to soothe you. My job is to make you think. And if this column has done that, even as you shudder at the headlines, then it has served its purpose. Ebola is at the door. But the real contagion is in our own minds.
