Russell Jones's Week Moment: Contaminated Labour

The British public can hear the hum of crisis, feel the absence of control, and the Prime Minister's lack of ideology is not helping, argues Russell Jones

Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Photo: Associated Press / Alamy

In one of many unforgettable scenes in the extraordinary and harrowing TV drama Chernobyl, a group of scientists and officials gather to ask for volunteers from the plant’s engineering team. The task is unthinkable: to wade through radioactive floodwaters beneath the ruined reactor and drain the tanks before the molten core melts through and triggers a thermal explosion— an eruption that could render half of Europe uninhabitable, and make Hiroshima look like a warning unheeded.

For this act of sacrifice, the three volunteers will be awarded 400 roubles.

Naturally, raised in a system built on lies and indifference, the men have questions—chief among them: is the radiation level fatal?

"I don't have an exact number", says an official.

"You don't need an exact number to know if it'll kill us."

Cut to them men wading, lost in the darkness, with nothing but a failing torch—guided by half-truths, while the nation waits, powerless, outside.

It’s a feeling Britons might recognise. We don’t know the exact numbers, but we can feel the rot. We can hear the hum of crisis. We feel the absence of control. And we know a lie when we smell one.