Social controls such as mask mandating and social distance measures could be in place for as long as the United Kingdom ensured rationing after the Second World War, Lord Sumption has warned.
He warned that “social controls” could last as long as rationing which ended in 1954, nine years after the Nazi surrender.
Lord Sumption former senior judge who sat on the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom said: “It’s politically unrealistic to expect the Government to backtrack now.
“An interesting parallel is the continuation of wartime food rationing after the last war. People were in favour of that because they were in favour of social control.
“In the 1951 general election, the Labour party lost its majority entirely because people with five years more experience of social control got fed up with it. Sooner or later that will happen in this country.”
When asked if we could be looking at a similar timescale for the total lifting of restrictions, he replied: “I think it may be even longer.”
His comments come after Mary Ramsay, the head of immunisation at Public Health England, indicated that masks and other basic measures could remain in place for years.
She told the BBC: “So I think certainly for a few years, at least until other parts of the world are as well vaccinated as we are, and the numbers have come down everywhere, that is when we may be able to go very gradually back to a more normal situation.”
Lord Sumption has been a heavily vocal critic of the Government’s Covid-19 response and has also said lockdown sceptic scientists had been “subjected to an extraordinarily unpleasant campaign of personal abuse”.
He added: “I know a lot of people that would prefer not to put their head above the parapet. From the very moment I started to make these points I began to get emails from politicians who agreed with what I had to say but that they themselves didn’t dare to speak out. That I think is a very serious state of affairs.”
During anti-lockdown protests, he criticised the police’s heavy-handed approach to protests, saying: “If the only way you can enforce distancing is by beating people over the head with truncheons then it’s not worth it.”
Editor-in-Chief | Carl D. Pearson has been involved in British politics and media from an early age, with the key knowledge of what it takes to run a news organisation for the 21st century. Mr Pearson, as Editor-in-chief, is responsible for supervising the daily tasks of publishing media and content to UNN’s website and various platforms.
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