With some senior Tories now trying to distance themselves from the disaster that was lockdown, for example Tory leader no-hoper Rishi ‘the rat’ Sunak and Grant Shapps, it appears that some of the rats have not received the memo and are content to go down with the ship. Our glorious outgoing ‘leader’ Boris Johnson has been justifying the lockdown this week saying that it would have been much worse had we not locked down. It is very hard to understand this view given that—and he well knows it—the modelling and the figures used to justify the lockdown were cooked and bogus. In any case, how much worse could it be? I guess he does not get out much beyond the Westminster bubble. If he did, he would see the ruined lives, ruined economy, ruined education system and ruined NHS, all entirely his responsibility.
Others clinging to the mast include spin doctor Lee Cain who is accusing Sunak of ‘Covid revisionism’ and claims that the prospect of lockdown was ‘agonised’ over by the relevant people and not arrived at lightly. However arrived at, if they genuinely had agonised over it, they would have come to the right decision and not locked down, surely. But Cain gives his position away by saying: “…the biggest mistake the Government made was not locking down sooner.” He is clearly just another lockdown fanatic.
Sean O’Grady of The ‘Independent’ asks ‘how dare we’ demand apologies from those responsible for lockdown. He claims: “The myth is being perpetuated that lockdowns actually caused more deaths than lives saved. It is a ridiculous suggestion, but a seductive one.” Given that there appears to be no evidence that lockdowns saved any lives and the evidence post-lockdown of increasing numbers of excess deaths as a result, it is hard to see how he comes to that conclusion. My guess is that he is just another lockdown fanatic.
Next up is Henry Hill writing in Conservative Home of which he is deputy editor, saying that it would be wrong to rule out future lockdowns as a means of responding to a pandemic. It seems incredible that he could consider in this way an intervention which had not only not been tried previously but was also specifically not recommended by the WHO and which has manifestly failed.
Most sensible people consider lockdown to have been one of the biggest crimes against humanity, ever. The efficacy of lockdown is not the issue. Even if demonstrated to be highly effective at saving lives; the price paid by those at the receiving end in terms of restriction of common law freedoms such as the right to assembly, free speech and movement was too high a price to pay. Rather than question if lockdowns were right or not, I am with Lionel Shriver when she asks how we ever let this happen in the first place; why did people not offer more resistance? I have no answer to that question, but I know with certainty, whatever decisions the UK Government comes to regarding the effectiveness of lockdown or their necessity in future, it will not happen again. The most successful outcome of lockdown has been to galvanise a large group of people: right and left; pro-vaxxers and vaccine sceptics; conspiracy theorists and conspiracy deniers; and those who believe in viruses and those who are sceptical into a body which—while we will continue to bicker amongst ourselves—will rise and resist if there is ever a next time.
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