Frankly, I had no idea who Lord Jonathan Sumption QC was until last year. His mighty historical tomes had passed me by, and such is my lack of interest in the proceedings of the Supreme Court that his glittering legal career had, likewise, escaped me. Then the coming of the hour of the pandemic brought the man to greater public attention, and to mine. Since then, I have been hanging on his every word. He has been vociferous in his opposition to the lockdown measures brought in by our governments and assemblies in the UK, allegedly to fight the pandemic.
There is no aspect of the lockdown policies on which he does not have a view. They are being brought in by government decree, thus bypassing the usual parliamentary scrutiny. They are not evidence-based and, in fact, do not work. People’s civil liberties are being curtailed to an extent never experienced in the UK even in wartime and the population is being conditioned in an alarming way into accepting the unacceptable, such as facemasks. The reason, he says, is clear. Governments, including our own, were panicked into following the lockdown measures used in China. Among establishment figures, he is a lone voice. For some of Lord Sumption’s best explanations of where we are and why he thinks what he does, see his interviews with Freddie Sayers on LockdownTV and on The Brendan O’Neill Show.
But there is more to Jonathan Sumption than being anti-lockdown and his most recent book Law in a Time of Crisis is well worth reading. This is a relatively short volume but one which covers a wide range of subjects from the influence of Magna Carta on our legal system (exaggerated, according to Sumption), Scottish independence (complicated), Brexit and the pandemic. I was especially struck by one of the two chapters on Brexit—written as a guide for foreigners—where he tries to explain why it took place. A proclaimed Remainer himself, he is far from being a ‘remoaner’. He does not subscribe to the notion that those who voted for Brexit were all stupid, racist or xenophobic. While acknowledging that we have our lunatic fringes in the UK he points out that some of the areas in the UK such as my own, Humberside, that benefited most from EU money and areas such as Sunderland where the thriving car industry depends on exporting to Europe returned some of the largest pro-Brexit votes. As Sumption expresses it, people voted to leave Europe because they wanted to leave Europe. No other explanation is required. I find this view very refreshing and contrary to the usual Remainer hysteria about Brexit and frank hatred of Brexiteers.
That said, the pandemic has had one benefit, it has largely shut the Remainers up. They tend to be the same people who have been terrified into submission by COVID-19 hysteria and who adhere most to COVID-orthodoxy. Their enthusiasm for Europe must also have been dented by the anti-British manoeuvres over the use of the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine. I have said it before in these pages and reiterate, if there is to be a public enquiry following the pandemic there is only one person who should chair it: Lord Jonathan Sumption.
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