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Does the Red Wall care about Boris's pandemic? Credit: TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty
When we go to sleep our brains go through a cycle of different stages; first the dreamless, NREM (non-rapid eye movement) stage, during which our minds digest the events of the day; and then the REM, when it interprets them with dreams.
It’s the same with historical events, which are digested and then usually followed about five to ten years later by serious works of fiction and history offering an interpretation of what happened. The more traumatic events might take longer, and those “dreams” may change the collective view of what happened; the popular interpretation of the First World War was only really established in 1929 with three different plays damning the conflict, quite different from how it was viewed at the time. The Holocaust took even longer, and it was only from the late Seventies that it became a subject replayed over again in our minds.
We have yet to collectively dream about the awful events of 2020. The history of how Boris Johnson handled Covid is still to be written, and today’s opinion polls tell us little. For that reason, I’d be wary of dismissing too quickly the impact of Dominic Cummings’s testimony yesterday.
The Cummings narrative, of grotesque incompetence and a shambolic, lazy hack of a Prime Minister, will almost certainly have no impact on the Government’s commanding lead in the polls, and Boris Johnson will continue his satanic lucky streak.
Most people don’t seem to mind that the Prime Minister is lazy and dishonest, and none of yesterday’s revelations will “cut through” to ordinary voters, at least immediately. When it comes to Johnson’s performance the people have spoken. The people think he did a good job. And yet maybe the people are wrong. Maybe we ought to care more about what the elite think.
Five years ago we started hearing a lot more about “the people”; on one side some talked of the referendum being “the will of the people”, while others demanded a “people’s vote”, as if the first referendum had been decided by geese or ducks.
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SubscribeThis is just silly Mr West. No one knows how things will play out; we are still in a pandemic, soon to be followed by an economic crisis. The idea that you can predict how Boris will be judged is risible.
events, my dear boy, events.
And as for the mistakes made by Boris et al, I invite you to predict the time, scale, duration and probability of the third wave. Or when the Indian pandemic will end.
And if you can’t, then stop passing judgements on those who had to make difficult decisions with no data and absence of hindsight.
Agreed.
Well said. Ed writes well enough, but the article was written in the headline panel. The rest merely pads out his beliefs. And a lot of us don’t agree with his conclusion, or care.
“the people”, as Ed describes us, do not care one jot for the revisionism of historians. And rightly so. I care more for creating things rather than cleverly using hindsight to explain how I would have behaved if I were in charge.
Ed’s schtick is that the Conservatives are doomed, a subject to which he devoted an entire book published in October 2019.
In the long run, he’ll be right – perhaps when those aliens the US government are now declassifying start showing their stuff.
I’m hoping the aliens will eat lefties and p155 petrol.
In the long run, humans like to have continuation of the past – no uncomfortable disruptions.
No, new ideologies, just a gradual adaptation to new things …
Every human institution is doomed. Its just how long they’ve got until they’re over which remains up for discussion.
The Daily Mail says ‘Police Surveillance State‘ in the West in 4 years if AI continues its trajectory!
It was a stinker. I’m sorry I bought and ashamed I read it nearly to the end.
I think his thesis was that small-c conservatives are doomed, and that the Conservative party can only win if they discard historic conservatism.
You are no the people – as you describe yourself.
The people are sheep and will believe as they are told. Now it is the ‘Fake News’ Boris Truth, but one day the real truth will come out. The question is if this real truth will be taught as true or false. If Youtube, Twitter, and Facebook, Fact Checkers have a hand in checking the ‘Facts’ it will be 100% lies which are the official truth.
50 % are sheep there are serious non-sheep around and many congregate in local pubs where discourse takes place…that is why the Govt keeps them shut when they don’t have any evidence for CV spreading.
Better shut down UnHerd then.
Unherd is the most suspect of all sources on the Internet. They protest their journalistic independence loudly, but in fact are as bad as the worst of them for distorting the COVID TRUTH. Because they give one side, one facet, of independent agenda, but then leave the MSM Liberal Lefty agenda truth for the 90% of the rest. Which to me is total Tacit Complicity.
Unherd WILL NOT talk of the economic situation of the lockdown, ZERO discussion of it – and that is the Real Story. Also avoids the destruction of education, the loss of freedoms, and the rest of the globe concerning covid. Unherd really is just MSM, it pretends to present all sides of the issues, but does not. It is just a brown sheep in the big flock of off-white ones, fallows the same Bellwether as they all do. baaa
Stories on Friends reunion, psychology jargon, Woke, just stuff – but no big picture, that is Unherd. I do like them, but they are not the actual picture, just a small view out of a side window.
Just a matter of time, old bean.
Totally agree. I’d like to know if UK Gov has been any better or worse than other democratic governments at handling this crisis – perhaps time will tell. I suspect about middling. The idea that all other governments (apart from ours) have handled the crisis with smooth efficiency and affable, cordial decision making at the highest level is laughable. I can just imagine the expletives between Macron and his people. The reality is that everyone has learnt as they’ve gone along. And, crucially, it’s still not proven that the UK death toll (as a per capita compared to other countries) is higher because of ‘preventable / avoidable mistakes’ on the part of Gov – a lot of scientists think it’s as much to do with the fact that we’ve got an older/ fatter, more poorly and lower Vitamin D population than pretty much any other country in Europe.
Agree Michael. The varying impact of COVID will turn out to be about correspondingly varying demographics, not government responses.
As someone who lost a parent (in a care home on 1 May 2020) as a direct result of Hancock’s crazy decision to empty hospitals of non essential patients without testing them; I disagree with your comment Michael. My father and 6 other residents died as a direct of the decision. It’s obvious that it was one panic decision to another. My father was old, but the manner in which he died was awful. Nothing will bring him back, but if we continue with the globalised world we need to learn from this and start to elect leaders not buffoons to the Executive. The current shower are reminiscent of English politics in the 18th century rather than the 21st.
Loved your reply.
I’d add only one word to Michael Smith’s last sentence – so it now reads … ‘we’ve got an older/fatter, thicker, more poorly and lower Vitamin D population…..’.
“I suspect about middling.” Sort of like The French handled WWII, avoiding all that fighting and being blown up, but still being taken over and made into a bankrupt, subject, people. Better than the Belgians or Poles I guess.
The French certainly fought against the Germans in WW2. Some of the largest tank engagements in history took place during the German invasion during massive French counter-attacks against over extended panzer divisions racing towards the sea. Ultimately, French military doctrine was at fault. The French generals organised their troops, heavy weapons and tanks poorly, and along WW1 lines. Tanks were often interspersed throughout infantry divisions, for example. The German Army concentrated it’s own panzers in huge formations that swiftly cut through French lines and scrambled supply and logistics. France did indeed declare war on Germany first and then fought hard but was simply beaten by a superior force at both the tactical and strategic level.
PS: As a Brits we should always remember the heroic rearguard action fought by French soldiers to allow the BEF to escape at Dunkirk.
I know the French fought the Panzers, but their army dispersed and utterly a mess. Meanwhile – – The Absolute Criminally incompetent French General sat in a distant Fortress with no lines of communication but couriers on motorcycles to cover all the armies!
But then the French soon capitulated, The British had to sink the French Fleets in North Africa in order to show USA the British were in for the long haul. (USA would not come in if the French Fleets could be taken by the Germans, and the perfidious French would not surrender them). Then the French military in Morocco and Tunisia fought to stop the allied landings in North Africa!!! (and then the French insisted for pride that their troops in North Africa (natives officered by French) be part of the Italian Campaign where good reports tell of the ill disciplined troops raping their way up Italy and the French not stopping it, Like the Russians in Germany.
Their army dispersed because they were routed and beaten by a superior force and not because of a lack of courage or morale. It’s a stereotype that the French gave up the fight in WW2 and not actually rooted in reality. It’s insulting to French soldiers that laid down their lives in their thousands and who fought bravely. The incompetence and poor doctrine of the French forces in WW2 is one thing. Insinuating that the French avoided the fight along the lines of ‘cheese eating surrender monkeys’ is just nonsense. Have the guts to leave this revisionist rubbish in the bin.
Spot on
This is a strawman argument. Criticising the policies of this Government does not equal claiming that every other government has handled the pandemic perfectly.
This excuse making for the Government is so clearly biased because they’re your tribe. You would never have had this attitude had Jeremy Corbyn been in power. Any government was going to make mistakes and the public by and large were willing to forgive given the scale of the crisis. Nonetheless, leaders must be held accountable for the decisions they make in the ‘heat of battle’ and it’s no good saying that you didn’t have the benefit of hindsight. I care about how you behave in a crisis and some do indeed do better than others when the shells are landing. If our leader has done comparatively badly and there are metrics by which we can cast judgement then they should be held accountable. Your excuse making is a license for the government to make consistently poor decisions and never be judged on that record. Biased and absurd rubbish.
I don’t think Labour would have done much better or worse – because they’d have been getting the same advice from the same experts and faced the same shortages of PPE etc. If you look at the figures and the waves across western Europe in reality there’s very little difference. London being a major travel hub and densely populated probably meant the virus was here and circulating before we knew about it. On the 3rd Jan 2020 the Telegraph reported on a ’10x higher than normal flu spike’ that had been causing concern to PHE. Moving patients to care homes is something all countries did and is largely due to existing protocols and is decided by hospitals not politicians. Unless you think Hancock was demanding old people be moved and all the doctors fought tooth and nail to fight that decision before knowingly sending people to their deaths. The hyperbole around all this is nuts and bears no resemblance to the reality that a. Pandemics are an unprecedented circumstance you can never fully prepare for b. Old people do, I’m afraid, die, of all kinds of things, and you can’t save all 80+ year olds from everything sad as that is. We seem to have convinced ourselves that people should live forever. The history of this planet shows clearly that death, pestilence and suffering are the norm, the last 70 years are the exception. The fact that the govt kept most of us in jobs during all this was, in my view, pretty important as I think without that there wouid have been far more civil unrest and even more misery. And the fact that this govt pulled a blinder on forward planning for the vaccine is, as well, a positive that should not be forgotten. If people think the Tories enjoy killing their core voters or being hated in this largely no-win situation, then you need to give your head a wobble.
I think Boris is a shameless liar and charlatan so it’s conceivable, perhaps even probable that someone else could have done better. At the very least they might have behaved approriately and not boasted about shaking hands with covid patients and the like.
The CMO said years ago obesity was the next major health crisis . She was ignored. People get the civil service and politicians they deserve. Only a people endowed with moral rectitude, honour, courage, duty, loyalty, self control, self restraint, sagacity, self sacrifice can elect politicians of this character. Since the 1960s The people have wanted free expression and a lack of restraint. which means one cannot control fear, gluttony, slothe etc . Only Spartan Society produces Spartans.
On the contrary, when Harold Wilson was in power we had the Hong Kong flu. A greater proportion of the population died though we were a smaller, slimmer, fitter population then. No-one politicised the pandemic. Nor was it politicised in America. This attempt to bring down HMG (and Trump) on the back of a national tragedy is disgusting and unprecedented.
The politicised bit of this crisis is your perception that legitimate criticism of our democratically elected leaders amounts to a coup d’etat.
What a load of tosh… a quick google search showed that Hong Kong flu… 1968… was a mere head cold cold compared to covid… the 1957 flu was bad one but still not quite up their with the CCP virus. It is so easy to check your facts you should try it occasionally
Dominic Cummings claims that Boris said he would not stop the millions of unregulated people coming into Britain last year as it would harm the tourist industry. That means that (if true ) the PM surely knew lockdown was impossible? So why did he allow the authorities ( in some cases with cruelty & brutality) to enforce something he already knew wasn’t workable? The whole thing was a chaotic mess-yes he can’t second guess how the covid would spread but if you have a fire you surely know not to pour petrol on it?
Do try and think back honestly: it wasn’t chaotic but surprisingly orderly.
I meant sending infected people to nursing homes
The only certainty in this whole affair is that Cummings has added a footnote to his CV: “I can’t be trusted”.
You must be a pretty forgiving fellow with that insouciant response! I think it should be pretty obvious by now that the response of this, very weak, government AND the British state was utterly chaotic, like a drunk driver veering all over the road. Look. at Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam, and other nations who had vastly fewer deaths, the order of magnitude difference is not something we can honestly quibble about.
Or alternatively Sweden, which stuck to its guns with a far more voluntaristic approach achieving a better balance between the pandemic and economic costs.
We started with one strategy, did a U-turn to follow another, then got impatient with that.. We disgorged untested NHS patients into care homes. We alternatively encouraged and then discouraged eating out and travel. We introduced border controls months too late, how difficult was that to make a decision on?
Then track and trace, it didn’t work, a sensible sounding regional approach was abandoned because of a bit of political push back. WE STILL aren’t properly supporting those who we ask to quarantine and self-isolate. We’ve spent billions but seemingly quibble about the costs of doing this. So quarantines are broken in large part because of foregone wages.
The UK has had both one of, if not the, worst death rates, AND the worst economic contraction. If we can’t make a judgement based on that then……
I’d still vote for the Conservatives, given the awful alternative, but I’ve always viewed Boris Johnson as a principle-free charlatan.
As a free(ish) Western society, we are not used to these “Asian” viruses. Our leaders were slow to react, in common with most of Europe. plus remembering the scare stories about SARS and others, which didn’t much affect us on home turf. We were a lot more robust re AIDS/HIV because we were terrified out of our wits by Govt propaganda. In the Far East they know of the toll these coronaviruses take and are suitably obedient. We in Britain have never been good at taking orders from above, and politicians know it. It took lots of deaths before people started thinking of their own mortality.
I think the UK is about 17th in the table of death rates /million of population. Moreover, I think it will be found that there is a strong link between obesity and a bad covid outcome. You may have noticed that we are one of the most obese nations in Europe? I’ve always found it unsettling that many of the people within the NHS are morbidly obese. Perhaps its all those chocolates from grateful patients and their relatives, given that the NHS is such a wonderful organisation?
The fact you’d still vote Conservative after all of what you just said is precisely why this Government can and will get away with anything. It’s truly scandalous.
Good points. The author fails to define timeline of events. As late as Feb 2020 , WHO was in denial. The Ferguson Report is published on 16th March 2020 which predicts 550K deaths. This is war death rates. At 550k deaths, leaders have to decide who lives and dies. Getting old people out of hospitals into care homes is least worst option.as of April 2020 we do not have quick and accurate tests.
On a ship, when it it is holed below water line bulkheads are closed. This means those people in leaking compartments have to be left to die to save the ship. ” The Cruel Sea ” shows the Captain’s dilemma.
It was found PPE did not have indefinite shelf life, it was thought ventilators were needed.
The PPI hospital scheme under Labour had reduced beds in some cases by 50%.
If it is choice between saving an eighty year old who has lived their life and someone with a life to life, what does one do ?
On the convoys in WW2 ships often not stop to pick up survivors in case they were sunk and there cases of ships sailing through them and killing them when depth charges were dropped.. All Captains were scarred by these decisions.
In April, 2020 there are not enough resources to cope with 550k predicted deaths from COVID 19: how are they best managed?
When was the last time anyone had to make a decision concerning who lived and who died ?
“J’accuse” ————–> Boris and Ferguson and Hancoc* and every other useless Wan* er who shut down society and printed money to pay for it!!!!!!!!!!!!
Agreed, And many of us having given up caring what the “Elite” and “Lovies” Tell us to do.
Absolutely spot on. Pure drivel.
An unpleasant and sneering article which seems to have little but disdain for ‘the people’. It might as well be the Guardian or the BBC. I myself am slightly mystified by the ongoing electoral success of Boris Johnson be he has at least had the decency to get us out of the EU and not lie us into any wars.
Moreover, few other (western) governments reacted more effectively to the virus and nobody believes that a Labour govt would have done a better job. The NHS is the NHS, whoever is in power and we will be forced to clap for it now matter how many people it kills. SAGE would have been SAGE whoever was in power and Neil Ferguson has made insanely inaccurate predictions under a succession of different governments. The media is the media whoever is in power and will be its own degenerate self whoever is in power.
“…few other (western) governments reacted more effectively to the virus…”
I must have been living in an alternate reality for the past year.
Surely Fraser means the SCAMDEMIC does he not?
SARS-CoV2 = a nasty respiratory pandemic able to kill the vulnerable in its current variants. Scamdemic = non evidence based actions carried out by interested parties to leverage a potentially lethal virus for gains in power, income or to boost their ideologies (Govts, Pharma industry, leftists in general but NHS managers and “scientists” in particular) SARS-CoV2 is an illness, it is amoral, it is neither truth nor lie. Scamdemic is an act of biological warfare and as such a crime against humanity.
Perfectly put Sir!
I believe I might have been the first to coin ‘scamdemic’ just as, having little better to do, I was the first to coin QuIslington and Woke Newington, among many others. Sadly, none of them has really entered the vernacular, but I live in hope.
Yes I fully acknowledge that, hence my post.
We must keep trying,” Rome wasn’t built in a day”
Show off. While we’re all showing off, I coined the phrase ‘Covid, am I bovid’.
For what it’s worth, I use “scamdemic” all the time. Never realised I picked it up from you.
Quislington is well established in our house
There was a book published in July 2020 called Scamdemic.
Have you heard “awokening?”
You take the words out of my mouth! The handling of the vaccine procurement was an isolated are of competence; absolutely everything else was handled with astounding ineptitude, including border management, communication, failure to act in a timely way, test track & trace, PPE – the list is endless. All of these things are understood and widely acknowledged, even in the right-wing press. I can only assume Fraser Bailey is attempting a pre-emptive stab at rewriting history to suit a specific narrative.
It’s far from clear that anyone would have done better under the circumstances. In particular, none of us can afford to lose sight of the the fact that, life , is binary. And the alternative was Corbyn. We’re probably all hoping that Sir Keir can pull together a superior proposition than Boris. On the basis of his track record so far, I don’t think many of us are ‘holding our breath’
Ah yes. It would always have been worse with Corbyn. We would have had an increase in universal credit, and railway nationalisation, on top of the pandemic. Oh, wait…
Possibly you are misinterpreting things. I don’t think ANY national government (possible exception Sweden) has handled the pandemic well. Fraser is not saying that the English part of the UK government handled it well, just not, if any, worse than the rest.
Apparently yes, Matt, you have been. The UK is currently 17th in the global table of deaths per capita, and even that is only because of our very generous interpretation of what constitutes a Covid death and the incomplete data collection of many other countries.
Don’t forget our uniquely vulnerable population. Most of the dead, would’ve been dead already were it not for the flu jab.
And a lot wouldn’t have been dead had the followed the “rules”.
go on then. who? in what way? and , like the aussies, were they not , quite obviously, facing different circumstances, and therefore not a fair comparator?
Why don’t you enlighten us and tell us which large countries in the EU you think had/are having a good Cov ‘campaign’?
Please use stats Cov deaths per capita balanced with excess deaths data (to account for different accounting methods) to support your arguments.
Germany has less than 60% of our per capita death rate.
Excess deaths at UK peaks in April 2019 – 108% – January 2021 – 42%.
Excess deaths in German peaks in August 2019 – 21% – December 37%.
Sources – Worldometer and Our World in Data.
They didn’t have many 90+ year olds to start with, having lost 7million in the disturbances of 1939-45.
Currently the UK has lost 127000 people to Covid. Italy is going to overtake that figure shortly. France has got some way to go but is coming up fast on the rails. In per capita terms Belgium is already back in the stables. Even super-efficient well-heeled Germany has lost 90,000 of its citizens. The fact is that the European reaction to the virus was more or less the same. Sure, big countries (Norway, Sweden) with low population densities, smaller immigrant populations and fewer people in vulnerable age groups, have achieved better outcomes, but using numbers of fatalities alone on which to justify a verdict that the UK has been astoundingly incompetent in its response to the pandemic, is like basing a balance sheet solely on turnover.
Where would you put Canada in your list?
Plus them fact that covid counting jas been thoroughly dishonest!
And still are, it seems.
Jonathan Ashworth would clearly have been a better Health Secretary. And, I will stick my neck right out, at least Corbyn’s persona projects compassion and caring.
Only to people as deranged as he is. To me he projects utter, homicidal malice. I can absolutely visualise him with a whip in his hand herding middle class children into gas chambers.
Are you unhinged?
Trolling, perhaps.
Is this an attempt at satire?
I can imagine him signing the paperwork Eichmann style but bet he hasn’t got the guts to look victims in the eye or smell their rotted corpses.
I think he’d have enjoyed it. He thoroughly agreed with the aims of the IRA, he thoroughly agrees with the aims of Hamas, he admired East Germany and Soviet totalitarianism. He is absolutely the sort of quisling who would have sought to join any puppet UK government established by a successful German invader of the 1940s or the USSR later.
During the Battle of Britain he’d have been rooting for the Luftwaffe, because they were then Communist allies. He’d have cheered as RAF fighters came spinning down in flames, because all of them were flown by his class enemies, and some of them were even flown by Jews (eg the ace Bob Stanford-Tuck).
Either invader would have needed local proxies, and as he held the same race and class prejudices as both, Corbyn – along with the likes of Wedgwood-Benn and Livingstone – would have been jostling to the front of the queue to volunteer his help to either.
Corbyn is too mediocre to have attained high office, but if he could contribute by strutting about and shouting in a commissar’s uniform, herding his class and race enemies into cattle trucks with a whip for their last journey, absolutely he’d have done so. The pure, sadistic evil just radiates from him.
Is it just me, or are JR’s posts becoming steadily more extreme? It’s almost like he started by trolling on the Guardian, and it took a while to realise that he was merely mainstream by UnHerd standards…
I agree he holds the “Anyone but Britain” views but disagree about his psychological state – ie sadism. His evil is banal and he is simply doing what a “good party member” would do by supporting torture and murder. This is not because he’s a loony per se, but because he sees life as an undergraduate seminar and is simply arguing for his version of a just war. I am convinced he would be unable to walk the walk. The one that scares me more is Owen Jones, who i expect has an inner Brady or Hindley he’d be only too pleased to let run free.
How are you coming on with your numbers of ‘Dreadnoughts’ for the German Imperial High Seas Fleet then, if I may ask?
I disagree with you about Corbyn but agree with Ed that Boris is an incompetent, lazy liar. I feel rather disenfranchised at the moment.
Tim Farron resigned for far less than Boris has said and done.
But he wasn’t known as ‘Tim’ for 10 years before. For me it’s the toe-curling sycophancy of others,(no disrespect to yourself!) just as much as the man himself which is so off-putting.
Obama’s ‘shape-shifting creep’ sums him up.
See if you can get Today’s ‘Politics Live’ programme on BBC2. The Tory MP for West Aberdeenshire, Andrew Bowie, gave a performance of quite extraordinarily creepy, self abasing Boris and Matt worship. Quite emetic.
But only if you are a terrorist
Not if you are Jewish.
The people still voted (GE2005) for Tony Blair.
So do people really care about foreign wars if their house prices go up?
The white wash Public Inquiry that only partially exposed Phoney for the war criminal he was had not happened then – only after he was deposed did the full horror of the man emerge.
LOL
GE 2010?
‘nobody believes that a Labour govt would have done a better job’
I do. So I guess that makes your assertion mistaken. And when you get one bit wrong it also casts a lot of your other un-evidenced assertions into question.
‘not lie us into any wars’ – we are involved in Yemen, for example. Not with troops but by selling the weapons so other people can kill each other.
Granted – Johnson took us out of EU. But lied to do it.
Because Barnier and Juncker were always scrupulously truthful.
They weren’t asking me for my vote.
They don’t ask anyone for their vote – it’s part of the design.
Barnier is trying it on with the French electorate now, and singing a totally different tune to do it.
Very well said. Other than the initial mistake of sending COVID patients into nursing homes, I suspect that nothing that would have been done would have made any difference to the overall outcome in terms of COVID deaths. What would have made a difference economically would have been for the Government to have stuck to its guns (i.e. the original plan), not be driven into a panicked reaction as a result of Ferguson’s totally flawed modeling, and proceeded as the Swedish government did. The end result would have been basically the same in terms of COVID, but a lot better in terms of all the small businesses that were forced to shutdown and go under.
In the end, one does wonder whether governments the world over will ever stop believing in “models” as if these were absolutely solid as opposed to very weak predictions. Unfortunately, I suspect they will never learn.
It is a totally flawed assumption that UK following the same policies as Sweden would have had the same outcome in UK.
It would be really useful if there were to be a proper scientific study of what all the differentiating factors were that led to the wildly differing outcomes between countries – one size does not fit all and lockdowns are not the right answer for everywhere. Even WHO now acknowledges that, but did not at the beginning when it caused desperately poor developing countries in hardly touched Africa to unleash immense harm on their populations.
It really bothers me that people here can’t read something with an anti-populist slant without reaching for words like “sneering”.
Ed, your strapline “His narrative of grotesque incompetence will eventually cut through” is true though despite your pleading in the rest of the article. Everyone knows he’s unfit to be PM yet you all still support him and keep him in post for fear of another Party, who are just as incompetent. Dom was right in one thing, the whole political system is broken but you are trying your best to keep it going with your gang in charge for entirely selfish partisan reasons. One day there will be a balanced account of Johnson’s reign and you will be on the wrong side of it for supporting such a charlatan. All those people needlessly dead… is that the price you are prepared to pay to keep him in post? If so, come out and say it. Don’t lie about it, like Johnson and his cronies.
The point is that ‘the people’ is a nebulous concept usually claimed by charlatans, dictators and the corrupt. The people are in fact quite divided on a number of important issues and yet we’re told the ‘true’ people of Britain are those that vote Tory and love Brexit. This rhetoric hastens our own demise. Britain must be more than the politics of only one half of this island.
“Moreover, few other (western) governments reacted more effectively to the virus”
That indictment is NO Excuse for how UK handled it as they almost all completely did everything wrong and will have caused immeasurably more harm than good.
It is like a teenager wrecking the car driving drunk and excusing themselves as everyone there was drunk.
NF assumed an IFR of 0.9% and a R0 of 3 without any measures. R0s of about 3 have been recorded in a number of countries, including UK. Hungary has deaths per capita of just over 0.3% (UK 0.19%) and still rising (hardly touched in wave 1, it has all been 2nd wave) – not everyone in Hungary has been infected and Hungary stuck 2 fingers up at the EU and bought Sputnik from Putin. Hungary is about 2 months behind UK in achieving the benefits and fairly close to UK in terms of numbers fully vaccinated (34.45% Vs UK 34.79% vs Germany 15.58%), which are starting to show through in the rapid reduction of deaths (down 34% in the last 7 days compared to the previous 7 days). My guess is Hungary will flatten out at 0.32%. All these figures are likely to be under estimates of those who have died from/with COVID. How wildly inaccurate was NF compared to Gupta who came on Lockdown TV and said 0.05% and the Swede who said 0.1%, both a just over a year ago?
Hospitalisation data (the most reliable data there is because we know those there definitely had it and they were sufficiently sick as a result of it) shows consistent and distinct peaks 2-3 weeks after both lockdowns, both for general hospital bed and ICU. Both times a collapse of the health service was narrowly avoided.
I think it is fair to question whether we could have done things better 2nd time around to achieve a far better balance between harm done by the virus and harm done by the measures to control the virus. The answer to that in my view is undoubtedly yes.
It is also fair to point out that every scientist who has made predictions has been wrong, one way or another.
It is also fair to point out that MSM have been abysmal throughout.
It is also fair to point out the alarming swing towards persistent authoritarianism – justified in the early days, but do politicians of all parties really think they can control populations that way and get away with it forever?
https://unherd.com/2021/03/lord-sumption-civil-disobedience-has-begun/
It is also fair to point out that governments’ policies are not the only differentiating factor between how countries have fared during the pandemic.
It is also fair to point out that there has been no effective opposition to anything Boris has done from the other side of the House, if anything they wanted more long term harm done to our children – what is the point of them drawing their pay and expenses? At least there were some questioning voices on the governments own back benches.
Finally it is fair to point out that NF illegally shagging his bit on the side really helped me in eventually convincing my wife, who moved from her normal role of managing several wards to managing her Trust’s response in the first wave and saw first hand how bad things really were in hospitals across the country, to let my son illegally shag his girlfriend for the good of both their mental health.
Poor timing to say that ‘the belittling of expert authority’ defines populism, when the Wuhan leak story dominates and most of corporate media and many scientists are being shown to be cowardly, manipulative and deceitful.
Isn’t that Boris?
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Absolutely!
A little bit of truth for you Jeremy. Almost all politicians are manipulative and deceitful. Media and science were supposed to remain professional and unbiased. Or at least have a try.
Yes, all politicians are economic with the truth. But the PM of UK has been accused (over and over again) of:
charlatan
immoral
serial liar (2x fired for lying)
unfit for high office
As much as anything, I think Cummings’ appearance yesterday before the select committee finally exploded the myth beyond all reasonable doubt that he was some sort of all-seeing, all-knowing, ‘now you see him, now you don’t’ behind the scenes political genius and svengali.
His attempts to ‘pull back the curtain’, Wizard of Oz stylee’ on the events last year certainly don’t show Johnson et al in a flattering light if true, but the clearly bitter and twisted man himself out for ‘re-weng-ee’ even less so.
In terms of Johnson’s personal judgement, my primary area of concern was why he chose to employ this twisted bundle of barbed wire as his major advisor in the first place.
Up until now, I’ve been – if not a Cummings fan – then at least an admirer and sympathiser of sorts.
Yesterday’s performance made me revisit my opinion of him. “A twisted bundle of barbed wire” – what a great description of him.
Me too. Very disappointed. I spent too much time last year defending his trip to Barnard Castle. This vindictive and dangerous person (who admits squirelling away communications and photos throughout his time at No. 10) has shown himself to be utterly untrustworthy.
Surely accumulating damning evidence during your time in office is normal operating procedure – look at Alastair Campbell for one.
I’d rather not.
Thanks for the apology.
I think the appeal was that he was so unusual, so untypical for the political establishment, with lots of daring new ideas. Britain is broken and needed a shot of something, anything in the arm to reform. Inviting such a disruptive element into the business of government was always going to be a risk – but if we know anything about Boris Johnson, it’s that he’s a risk-taker. That’s the best and worst thing about him. Some risks go right. Others, like letting Cummings near the levers of power, go seriously, catastrophically awry.
Agreed. And we should remember that BJ had never worked closely with DC. It’s only now become clear that he invited a viper into the heart of government, someone recording and storing private conversations for future personal use.
You are not alone, I stuck up for him over his Durham trip, but the malice drip, drip dripping from his lips, plus his outright lie that he wasn’t the Chatty Rat leaves me loathing him.
Upvoted for the Evil Prince Ludwig reference.
I think this bit ‘exploded the myth beyond all reasonable doubt that he was some sort of all-seeing, all-knowing, ‘now you see him, now you don’t’ behind the scenes political genius and svengali.’ is absolutely true. But many of us knew that anyway and he said it himself. What I found interesting is that he gave a perfectly believable account of the shambles that passed for government throughout much of last year.
Yes, I tend to think Cummings has blown his moment a bit. This was more a moment for Starmer-like forensic blabla, but Cummings’ over the top and personal insults don’t help his credibility.
His career to date is a litany of similar fractious encounters whereby it seems that if you don’t agree with ‘Dom’s view’ you are branded an idiot, incompetent, or in this case a liar.
“It’s not encouraging. Pretty much everything in history with “the people” in it has tended to be either murderous, stupid, disingenuous or just incompetent…”
Blimey, I wonder what Ed makes of the American constitution…
“satanic lucky streak” – your slip is showing.
Perhaps the ‘Cummings narrative’ is just another attempt by the media to make anti-Government news stretch to fit the ‘content’ pages. That politics is a rough business, full of compromise and backtracking, is hardly news.
Mind you, Boris is lucky. Look who his opponents are, idiots like Corbyn, Starmer and Rainer.
Very instructive to see the people who denounced Cummings as the spawn of Satan for more than 5 years now declaring he is the source of all truth, knowledge and wisdom.
Yes, just as in the 80s Labour, having hated Heath for decades, suddenly adored the miserable old sulk because he hated Fatcha.
He always said he wasn’t a Tory – his motivations are a mystery to me. He’s just an example of the sort of people Tories give jobs to.
History will also provide a better perspective on how much of what Cummings said is actually true. Packing the cabinet full of inexperienced, largely incompetent lackeys smacks more as the work of a control freak such as Cummings than that of the lad who just wanted to be liked.
On the topic of populism: I don’t believe enough serious thought has been given as to whether this represents the General Will or the Will of All. The decision to make us prisoners in our own homes while still allowing people to travel into the country from Covid hot spots is somewhere between the conservatism of let the rich do whatever they like and the neoliberalism of free movement. In neither case did it serve to protect the citizens that Johnson is apparently so clearly desperate to keep on side. People from all political persuasions I’ve spoken to about this are in agreement that this is the point on which history will judge the PM most harshly.
The overarching theme here is one of inconsistency. I believe all of us can see this in Johnson, so I’m not really sure we have learned anything new.
Cummings body language during the hearing appeared to be a classic psychopath, where he exhibits ‘I am the CEO’ and is in total control of the hearing.
There! Now we don’t need to pay attention to what he said.
In the Times he is being attacked for being autistic.
Did you actually watch the hearing? I don’t think a psychopath would nearly break down in tears over his near death experience, his wife & kid being threatened with murder outside their house, and having the blood of thousands on his hands. He’s not a psychopath – he just doesn’t give a shit about the PR charade of a country controlled by the media and would rather actually work, and discuss things rationally. It is the bane of the modern British that hard working is demonised (contra China, i.a.) and this whole debacle foreshadows our downfall.
Given that a lot of his information regarding dates around lockdown has been shown to be incorrect already and his preference for totalitarian actions in a liberal democracy then I would imagine that much of what he said will just be shown to be the acts of a man who feels aggrieved that no one else is as clever as he thinks he is.
Cummings said one of the most damning things was the appointment of someone like himself to such a crucial position. Of course so insincere, coming from him now, but nonetheless hard to evade – certainly by contemporary historians.
In mind are the twin images of Johnson as the slack-jawed, ‘non-expert’ needing a ‘fixer’ or Johnson as the cynical, vicious figure of division, a la the Brexit farrago . Of course it’s both.
And how could we have system where the alternatives for Prime Minister in 2019 were people like Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn? (We need some sort of Primary system, where regular voters get to select the candidate, not just party members.)
My politics are opposed to Cummings’, and his disposition is apparently corrosive, but one can recognise a high-grade ‘conservative’ thinker. (Without him Brexit would not have happened. End of.)
“We need some sort of Primary system, where regular voters get to select the candidate, not just party members.”
Like the one that resulted in Trump Vs Clinton?
Yes. Agreed, the end result might be just as grotesque, given the times we live in. But at least more people are involved.
I agree that more buy in from the electorate is key, I’ve no idea what would achieve that.
Oh no, Clinton was manufactured to come up trumps 😉 ahead of Bernie Sanders by the DNC.
As was Biden. Worse still, Kamala Harris, who is a heartbeat away from the Presidency despite earning precisely ZERO delegates in the Primary. Feh.
Such is the ‘Great Republic’, the ‘Land of the Free’, and other utter tripe!
It can’t even capture & convict the (black) killer of Ms Ashli Babbitt, yet rewards the corpse of one George Floyd Esq, a ‘King Kong’ of a man and an habitual, violent criminal, with $27 million!
How Thomas Paine must weep.
Home of the Brave.
A primary system is not the answer – see America for how it can go wrong. It would be better to change from first-last-the-post to some other voting system such as alternative vote or single transferable vote.
But has it gone ‘wrong’? I know it kind of belongs in another more ‘innocent’ era, when certain people wouldn’t have dreamt of putting themselves forward – they would have looked in the mirror, properly.
But it’s undeniable, more conservative, ‘mainstream’, people get to vote for a candidate/s who is eventually selected formally by the respective parties. It’s then more democratic in the proper sense.
I know it breaks down easily in the UK as we ‘don’t vote for a Prime Minister’ (try telling that to 1,000,000s who vote in GEs – since Thatcher, Blair, PM’s office has morphed into ‘president’). But there must be a way of avoiding these extreme situations, with dangerous idiots potentially having so much power.
Yes, absolutely for some kind of PR. I don’t think it should even be voted on in a referendum. Just implement it. Even a 16yr. old would get STV, surely. Then MPs would actually be the most popular candidates in the contests.
The experience of 2019 in Parliament shows that the PM is anything but quasi-President. What is clear is that opinion polls are a poor guide to election outcomes. Perceived quality of party leader is more reliable, and its utility dates back to 1983:
1983: Thatcher obviously a better choice than Foot
1987: Thatcher obviously better than Kinnochio
1992: Major obviously better than Kinnochio
1997: Blair obviously better than Major
2001: Blair obviously better than Hague
2005: Blair obviously somewhat better than Howard
2010: Cameron obviously better than Broon
2015: Cameron obviously better than Miliband
2017: May slightly better than Khorbiyn (supported because mistaken for a Remainer)
2019: Johnson obviously better than Khorbiyn
2024: Johnson obviously better than Starmer
2029: Sunak obviously better than Burnham
and so on.
Not sure why we don’t abolish elections altogether and just ask JR who he wants in the job.
Not PR – way worse than a simple FPTP. I’d go for STV.
STV for me
Sarah Wollaston, I believe, was chosen as a Tory candidate by some sort of primary. She was never really a Tory and did all she could to overturn the Brexit vote. Sadly, politics seems to attract the lowest of the low. It always has done and it always will, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
I was at university with Anna Firth (Garrett as was then) – Tory candidate in 2019 for Canterbury.
I was more passionate about that vote going Boris’s way than any other election I can remember.
Yet she was then, and I believe remains, such an odious character, that I gave her loss in Canterbury as big a cheer as I did Pidcocks in Consett.
So how do you want to find candidates?
If they get appointed by Party HQ you will complain (ignoring the people – and you are obviously their tribune) and if they win a primary (Sarah W) you complain as she was never really a Tory but Mark Francois is? Bernard Jenkyns?
I think really competent people, who don’t really want the job at all, should be selected as MPs to do 5 years as a form of national service and be allowed to stay on for no more than another 5 if they decide they want to. We don’t need parties, elections or 600+ of them and all the expense that entails either. There just needs to be a mechanism to get rid of ones that underperform early.
You are dreaming. US System was based on not having parties and now we have to 2 parties.
You say really competent people…but The People say they want politicians that represent them. And how would you measure underperforming ? Voting record? passing laws?
The 2019 GE is only grotesque depending on your views towards Johnson. Love him or hate him, he had the stripes to obtain a lot of votes and a decisive majority, thereby unlocking the torpor of a Parliament which had been reduced to a bunch of elites fantasising about which of them should lead a “caretaker” Government.
A better comparison might be the 2017 election, fought by 2 deeply uninspiring candidates (Corbyn & May) that most people disliked (and 2 in a long line of similar). One might argue Johnson swept home mostly by possessing the rare quality of ‘likeability’ with large numbers of the population. Maybe political parties will conclude there is something in that. I heard Johnson described last weekend as “the only one you’d go for a pint with after work” and whatsmore probably laugh at their jokes.
62% of the UK population thinks Boris lies.
Correct, but they don’t care.
“He who is without sin” etc*
(* John 8:7.)
95% of the UK populations think 95% of all politicians lie.
His “Love Actually” skit was inspired.
WOW
Is this Unherd or is this Conservative Home?
I really don’t care about Dom (he thinks he is Bismarck+Moltke) but all my life I was told that conservatives care about norms. moral, institutions and so on. And yet the Leader of the Conservative Party is a serial liar.
A man described by his own children as a selfish lying p….
And The People (clearly they are here! – not the Guardian which is populated by the elites with 2nd homes in St.Anton or Provence) simply don’t care – despite years of protestations about lying politicians (you know who you are!)
The default position here seem to be: “Boris is a SOB but he is our SOB”. And that is fine – just don’t give me that BS about morals, principals, and so on. And don’t forget to vote me down. I want to win that “race” .
Boris does or has done two things that endear him to Conservatives no matter what the other ways in which he may fall short.
One is that he upheld and won the continuing existence of a free and independent British state, the most important institution of all.
The second is that he keeps Labour out. There can be no finer service to the country.
In the same way, the main reason many Labour people supported the profoundly evil Blair was that he kept the Tories out. Once he was no longer leader and no longer winning elections, he served no purpose, so they dropped the pretence and let the hate rip.
“may fall short”….really ???? Just may not ACTUALLY he is a serial liar.
UK was a free state that is how the “profoundly evil Blar” invaded Iraq. Remember that? I do! I also remember how the British people (yes The People!) voted in GE2005 for 2 political parties that ACTUALLY (not may!) supported the war – institutionally.
So based on your “reasoning” above are we to expect the Tories to “Once he was no longer leader and no longer winning elections, he served no purpose, so they dropped the pretence and let the hate rip.”????
You keep banging on about Boris being a liar as though Labour has ever put up a candidate who wasn’t one. Sorry, it’s just not the differentiator you think it is.
Liking this country is. No Labour leader ever has actually liked this country. Literally not one. No Conservative leader has ever disliked it.
The Conservatives voted for war because they were lied to. They assumed that no Prime Minister, not even the psychopath Blair, would present lies to Parliament to secure approval for an illegal war, because surely nobody was that evil. But Blair plumbed new depths.
Once Boris has outlived his utility, of course he’ll be booted. How long is it since a Conservative leader was allowed to resign graciously from office in his own time? They screw up, they’re out.
I think it is – you clearly don’t. that is fine.
But don’t complain about Blair lying – because he DID WIN the GE2005 Election.
My position is a principled one about lying. Yours (despite your pretension) is: lying is OK as long as my side wins!
Unfortunately Jeremy, Richard Chater has probably beaten you to it in the ‘downvote Olympics’.
About a week ago he achieved an unprecedented 215 down votes on one article alone. Surely a world record?
Sadly, that evening he deleted all his posts, thus posterity is the looser.
This screed or rant is unhinged. From across the pond Britian’s response is pretty much as our response. Differing scientific advice in the beginning, is it just the flu, arguments of hear immunity vs. locking down an entire economy. Britain’s response compared to Germany or France’s is model and the Britian’s people are vaccinated. Humans are flawed they make mistakes. Frankly if he knew anything about history he’d look at one of my icon’s and worlds in Churchill. His handling of Gallipoli and the death he wrought there was malfeasance and murder. Did he do it out of evil wish for his soldiers to die? I think not. I do not think Boris wanted Britian’s to die. I cannot think of one country that was prepared for a virus that China unleashed upon the world.
Johnson has a touch of the rogue People knew who they were voting for including me. Did the government handle some aspects of the pandemic poorly? Maybe, but hindsight is wonderful.The idea that I should listen to the elites who created a dictatorship of Europe and continue to peddle Marxist madness in the UK makes me incandescent. I’m Scottish so know all about being told to shut up and do as I’m told.
In the minds of the Occidental commentariat there is still a confusion of terms.
They use the word ‘populist’ to describe various nations’ incipient rebellion against the present-day (dreadful) ruling caste in the western world as if it considerably meant Poujadist or redneck-hick disgruntlement.
It IS a rather tired and tattered term, but I think in today’s context it signifies disenchantment with the policies of the meritless ‘meritocrats’ and elites without competence who have been running societies such as ours.
What is interesting is how, so far to date, the Populist movement gathers pace and size like a giant wave coming in toward a shore; but the leaders it has acquired at the top of government are either wide-boy chancers – Trump, Boris Johnson, Kurz and Strache in Austria – surfing the wave for personal gain, or well-meaning persons like Marine Le Pen who are probably not up to the task.
We need to see the next phase of the Tsunami of public disenchantment creashing over the shore and headed by people with a very different agenda from the Common Purpose Davos crew, but this time honest and competent.
That may come, born of sheer public exasperation.
All the comments miss the obvious. Cummings said that the way government and Whitehall work ensures no-one is ever responsible when things go wrong, and therefore no-one is ever to blame. His analysis of the mediocre, media-driven, incompetent organisation that constitutes our government and Civil Service is spot-on. Same applies to the BBC, Royal Mail, NHS, Kensington and Chelsea (Grenfell), National Trust and the majority of our third-rate institutions which are completely and quite obviously incapable of delivering the outcomes they were set up to provide. Standards are shoddy, laziness and disorganisation prevail at the very top of society, and the people put up with it while the liberal elite (now mostly married to each other) pocket the proceeds.
Great post. A perfect depiction of modern Britain (and much of the West), as has been obvious for 20 years or so. And this combination of incompetence without accountability and unadulterated greed is very rapidly destroying the West.
Its obvious because its obvious. Pretty much the whole of the population has seen inquiry after inquiry concluding that lessons must be learned but no blame (and no punishment) allocated.
Ever watched Yes, Minister or Yes, Prime Minister?
If it’s so obvious why has nothing changed? Cummings himself willing admits he is not the right person for the job, there by a “quirk” in history and who tasked himself with renovating the civil service to the extent that he could – which mainly involved hiring people that are actually competent to replace him, and taking back control from HR jobsworths (hence the whole success of the taskforce, cutting through the bureaucracy).
Great show and I am sure if we trawled back through the episodes we could find some that fit the current situation – the one where Hacker becomes PM was really apt for the EU – the “British Sausage” “One office paying farmers to produce food we don’t need and right next door another paying to destroy it – that’s not true they are not even on the same floor”.
A few years ago I bought a DVD of it via Amazon.com for a US friend as a thank you for having me when I stopped over in Washington for a night. I put a message on it saying it was an educational documentary to help him understand the British political system. Wouldn’t it be great if someone did a Yes Mr President for Trump then Biden.
Good explanation of “Stan’s Law”; one I formulated many years ago – the bigger the institution, the more corrupt and incompetent it becomes. You could have included the FA, FIFA, UEFA, the RSPCA, and the Caravan Club.
There are exceptions, such as the Samaritans, but sadly not many. The solution is constant scrutiny by independent experts, with power to immediately fire folk like the present head of the National Trust.
What planet are you on Mr West, with your “It’s still disastrous that the Government completely failed to respond to Covid.” – Really, don’t you remember the lockdowns, the support to business, the Vaccine Task Force, the vaccine factory constructed outside Oxford, the Armed Forces taking over the planning, the real-time data system (achieved in 8 weeks) the high rate of population vaccination compared to everywhere else and the 8 vaccines developed?
Exactly – they locked us all up for most of the year. If that’s “failing to respond” I dread to think what “responding” would have involved.
Zyclon B.
It won’t cut through because last June the same people who are now imploring us to listen to Dominic Cummings did an absolutely bang-up job of monstering him and destroying his character. Now no one who doesn’t already dislike Boris Johnson is likely to take his words seriously. On top of this, people are not the idiots the media takes them for. They are able to grasp that the pandemic was unprecedented in living memory and that governments could be forgiven for not having a plan and for being reluctant to impose measures as extreme as lockdowns without being certain they were necessary. Many of us think the real scandal will be the death tolls of the lockdowns, but they will only emerge many years down the line, in scientific studies which will not have Piers Morgan and the rest of the media whipping up daily hysteria over them.
Disappointingly for me, this meandering disjointed opinion piece lacks the quality, structure and clarity that I think Unherd could be striving for on such a subject.
A poor piece for Unherd. Full of assertions and fact free. An op-ed as they seem to call them in the US. No balance, no explanation that there are several different opinions concerning his assertions. No humility to acknowledge that we might not yet know enough about the virus, how to tackle it and what decisions were made and why to draw any meaningful conclusion. But the author seems to know everything. Are you Cummings in disguise?
No where does Mr Cummings even mention Early Treatment (with a combination of well established medications) – which could have saved many lives. Waiting till people were taken to hospital before treating them was a terrible decision, but Mr Cummings has not noticed this – nor does he seem to understand that the medications used in Early Treatment were systematically SMEARED. Early Treatment with a combination of well established medications could have saved about 80% of the people who died – but the establishment reaction was “Trump mentioned one of the medications, so Early Treatment must be evil – because Orange Man Bad!” Many doctors tried to break through this “Orange Man Bad!” mantra – but in most of the United States (and the United Kingdom) they were ignored. And some 128 thousand people have died in the United Kingdom – when most of them could have been saved with Early Treatment with a combination of existing medications.
Mr Cummings is totally fixated on lockdowns and other failed policies – he also has an obsession with Bill Gates (a person with no medical qualifications, indeed no qualifications at all – other than being born into a powerful and well connected family). Mr Cummings appears to have learned nothing from the last year – and is just ranting that the failed lockdowns should have been earlier and stricter – even though that policy did not work in Italy, New York, New Jersey…
Well said Paul.
Thank you.
And in the time since “Trump mentioned X…,” we’ve seen the lab theory gain credence, treatments like HCQ and Ivermectin emerge from the shadows, and one professional after another promoting things like Vitamin D, fresh air, and exercise. We have states that took diametrically opposed approaches, and the ones that treated their citizens like adults have statistically fared better. This includes Florida, with its disproportionate number of elderly people.
Yes everything that Donald John Trump mentioned was automatically wrong – because he said it, that is the mental level of the establishment.. Certainly he sometimes did not speak clearly – but he did say he was just passing on what he had been told by various doctors (he never claimed to be one himself). What the media should have done is go to talk to those medical doctors – instead they just chanted “Trump wants you to drink disinfectant and die horribly”, The only concern of the media, and much of the bureaucracy, was “attack Trump” – they were totally indifferent to saving lives.
His injecting disinfectant gag was probably not the smartest move though.
I tried the fresh air, exercise and sunshine regime in 2020. The sunshine gave me ample free Vit D. And I met a few very interesting new people trying the same cure, none of whom believed the Matt Hancock advice.
HCL and Ivermectin continue to be smeared…. I have followed the Ivermectin story closely for many months and the deliberate misrepresentation by the WHO and big pharma and the support given them by corporate media and social media has been criminal to watch unfold. They have blood on their hands.
Governments are not excused either. The UK government has been apprised of meta analysis efficacy by BIRD and they have simply not responded. South Africa tried banning it and many in the population simply sourced it illegally (me too), until a court case forced their hand. Besides the Wuhan leak, this is one of the biggest stories of the pandemic.
indeed, the not distributing masses of vit d, Zn etc etc (very cheap) the not treating of people ill with covid (cheap) before they end on ventilators (expensive), the not allowing people to have good mental health (cheap: minimal lockdown) was chosen over wrecking people’s mental health (will be very expensive) treating only in hospital when very ill (very expensive) and now a mass vaccination experiment (very expensive) which finishes Dec 2022 and may well lock all those vaccinated in forever needing to take new variant vaccinations (very expensive, but I sincerely I hope I am wrong here).
I am not sure how the media scientists and government can still look young people in the eye….. no to mention the mainstream media editors
Sorry, Ed, a very unconvincing definition of populism. If Boris’s success with the Red Wall is populism, it’s a populism based on people’s dislike of change, not desire for it. A change in who they vote for is just the surface appearance of deep unhappiness with the unwanted change they have observed in their local areas.
I do not support Johnson’s government on the C-19 issue, but let’s be honest about this ‘shunting into care homes’.
> These people were not fit, healthy or in any way vigorous, they were in hospital, and in most cases were days, weeks or at most months away from their demise
> If the government truly believed that hospitals would be inundated with younger, healthier sufferers of C-19, who had a good chance of surviving with hospital care – then it was an entirely reasonable thing to do.
> Like it or not, but the decision stems from calculating the number of years of life that would be lost – a 45yr old has many more years of life ahead of them than an octogenarian?
> The fact is it turned out not to be necessary
> Cummings said that Hancock had said that they would be ‘tested’ – tested or not, it would have made no difference if they were expecting the hospitals to be inundated with younger people.
> Ultimately, it was a practical decision to save younger lives.
My memory may be playing up, but at the time of the hospital/care home clear out, weren’t they unaware that covid could be transmitted when symptomless? So is it not possible that at the time they believed that they were Covid free and so didn’t think it necessary to test non symptomatic cases?
It’s the failure to test them that was the problem, not the moving them into care homes. I don’t know what the final figure was, but at one time last summer somewhere close to 40% of all deaths were from care home residents. However, you dress it up, this was a terrible mess and I can understand why people are very angry.
Of course it was an appalling error whatever the cause. But this Government/NHS is not alone in having made the fateful decision. Scotland, Sweden, New York and most probably throughout Europe. In reality the numbers of cases per 1m population are remarkably similar through the Western world and the deaths per 1m are again very similar. Factor in different counting and definition measures and funnily enough I think everyone will find that if a populous country was hit, it produced the same results. Maybe I am wrong but IMHO a bit of RNA is not subject to politics and it certainly cannot be shut out forever.
And another thing….. why the sensitivity about “herd immunity”? Isn’t that exactly what vaccines are for? (well apart from injecting Bill Gates’s microchips obviously!)
I think it’s that herd immunity without vaccines is dependant on allowing many people who could be permanently disabled or killed by the virus to catch it.
To achieve herd immunity naturally, the vulnerable needed to be properly shielded, the middle tier of vulnerability needed to be really careful and the rest needed to go out and get it, get over it and get on with their lives. Basically what GBD was saying, but it got dismissed out of hand because it would not be 100% effective (undeniably true). But would that have been a better balance between short term and long term impact? – I think so but we will never know because we never tried.
Long COVID is a fly in the ointment. I met up with a lady in her late 30s back at work for the first time in months who was quite sick, but not hospitalised, early in the first wave. Hopefully she will fully recover now.
Fortunately now we do have the vaccine – an undeniable triumph for Boris, despite what anti vax nutters say. The benefits are showing clearly in our data when compared to the lamentable EU programme. The first real test though is just starting. We are seeing an uptick in cases from a very low level (up 18% in the last 7 days compared to the previous 7 days) there will be a concomitant increase in hospitalisations and deaths. But as a proportion compared to previous waves, both should be much less – time will tell, it is too early. However the real test will be next winter. If we enjoy a near normal Christmas in 21, then we will all have Boris’s vaccine success to thank for that. I think the vulnerable will need boosters in the autumn though – like the flu jab and that will probably be annual. Trials are underway already for that.
Most countries cocked up with their care homes. Having totally inadequate testing at the start exacerbated the situation – the intent to test was there just not the capacity. If you look at excess deaths in care homes since July, overall they are negative – learned from the mistake and did not repeat it, helped to a large extent by the people who did die in the first wave effectively having their deaths advanced by only a few months anyway. The age profile of people who died from / with COVID is virtually exactly the same as the age profile of deaths in normal times, hence why the average age of COVID deaths is a little bit greater than life expectancy. If you look at hospitalisation figures in the first wave then it was necessary to clear as many hospital beds as possible – to free up staff (who were becoming infected / having to self isolate because family were infected) as much as space, what nearly led to the collapse followed by loads more deaths was the design capacity of oxygen evaporators being exceeded and tripping. Arguably, with hindsight, clearing out beds did not need to be done quite so hastily but it did need to be done. Unlike those who died from / with COVID, the age profile of those who needed hospital treatment was much younger and was even younger still 2nd time round.
What was most sad was the manner of many of the deaths and subsequent funerals – denied the chance to die peacefully with their loved ones around them. However at the time, with the lack of testing and severe PPE shortages, there was no other option.
I was angry that GBD got dismissed so glibly and even more annoyed when schools were shut for the 2nd time there was also the apology to the vulnerable that they would have to START shielding again – most were doing it anyway from when it all started to kick off again in the autumn, but it does show how badly screwed up the priorities and “advice” had become.
So is finishing old people off with an untested so called vaccine also part of the plan?
Looks like the unsuspecting Mr Shakespeare, the first person to be vaccinated in the UK actually died of a stroke like these old people in France who seem to be dropping like flies.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/KbduBFnvKXLS
Is the process going to migrate down the age groups to eventually encompass young people and children? When will a point be reached when all this pressure to vaccinate is going to stop, and the remainder of the unvaccinated will be allowed to live damage free?
I think that’s true and was compounded by a shortage of quick testing capacity in hospitals.
” because there is also a vague feeling that he supports “people like me” against remote elites,”
Irritating I know, but I wonder whose fault it is that I prefer him to the elite.
You are to blame for being conned – by now you should know the truth.
The prattling of a kid.
better than a geriatric.
Go away Jeremy.
Really? Where do the “conservatives” gain the right or indeed even the expertise to exercise such protection?
There may be something in this distinction between conservatism and populism. Perhaps the country oscillates between them. But when our national future is in the hands of Dominic Grieve, Ken Clarke and (God help us!) Gavin Shuker, we know which way the pendulum ought to swing for a while.
I had to re-read this a couple of times. Is he not referring to non-political, mainstream, moderate, people rather than the Tories? Or have I misunderstood your comment? Apologies if so.
To ‘plunder’ Caligula:*“Would that the political class had but one neck!”
(* Original quote: “Would that the Roman people had but one neck!”
Suetonius : The Twelve Caesars.)
This reminds me of the way the Labour Party hated Michael Heseltine until he stuck the knife into Thatcher, at which point they loved him.
See the Democrats and Liz Cheney for more of the same.
If Dominic is writing History….no wonder Henry Ford observed that History is bunk.
So far, I regard Dominic as just another performer in a huge circus. I am waiting for some serious historian to straighten out the deluge of factoids with which we have been showered for the last 15 months. It was great fun to hear Dominic claim that Mad Matt Hancock was lying continuously. But then it was stark obvious that Mad Matt was utterly unfit for any public office – every utterance from telling us not to sit for a second on park benches to threatening to lock us all up 24/7 without exercise showed that he was seriously unhinged.
I don’t think Matt Hancock is mad. The more worrying point is that the strictures you mention and many others were based on the government’s experts’ advice. For the first lockdown, I can see why they were ultra cautious. But what gets me is the apparently complete failure to learn any lessons and apply them with later restrictions and lockdowns. For example, by late summer it was very clear that transmission outdoors is very infrequent, as is transmission by touching contaminated surfaces. What’s dangerous is exposure to people for relatively long periods indoors. But the advice on handwashing, 2 metres etc continued unchanged. Meanwhile SAGE continued to **** about with their models!
On another characteristic populist trait — the belittling of expert authority — Johnson’s government is hardly Trumpian, either….the British Government has always followed expert advice throughout the epidemic — it’s just a shame the experts got a lot of things wrong.
Maybe this vaunted “expert authority” should be questioned, like anything else. There is a reason that appeal to authority is a rhetorical fallacy. Perhaps the populists are more familiar with a trait that is notably missing among the self-styled elites – humility. Imagine a single scientist, politician, or other alleged expert simply saying “we don’t know for sure” on questions of covid.
Such an answer might not be satisfying but it would be honest. Not knowing implies a desire to find out, rather than an insistent on the blunt instruments of coercion and force in mandating that people do things that you yourself are not subject to. Populism has a place largely due to the observable failures of the professional political and expert class.
Twenty twenty hindsight is a wonderful blade sharpener for backstabbers
Too true!
Cummings is no less clueless than any other politician and simply makes convenient noise that supports his own political aims by embracing the popular paranoid Scamdemic narrative. There remain ONLY two things we actually know about Covid, 1/ the death rate is truly no worse than the common flu and 2/Nothing else since any valid data has been completely twisted to suit the politicians need to cover their asses for overstepping their elected authority and categorically destroying the world wide economy and the educated middle class!!
Mr. West a demoralizing account of the government and with it an ear bashing that I feel unfair as it is personal and it Boris that you are having a go at. Yet see the pushing of the elderly into care homes initially was directly through the lack of forsight by the medical experts. Who if anyone, should have seen the correlation, but obviously didn’t. Then you talk of the public as though in dismay. Those ignorant fools forgiving Boris, oh how senile of them. Or that is how it reads. Though to say I think given the unexpected pandemic, and overall circumstances, many of the government staff combined in their various roles did an excellent job, although hindsight allows us to see were we went wrong.
John Major’s government had given us 16 consecutive quarters of economic growth by the time of the 1997 election, but at that point, the memory of Black Wednesday had seared itself into the collective memory.
Really?
As far as this Tory-voter was concerned, there was no way I was going to vote Tory in 1997…….because of the sleaze – and staleness.
The terrible thing is who realistically is there to vote for?
In my lifetime the Tory Party have behaved atrociously on three occasions.
Firstly the manifest deceit over Suez for which the wretched Anthony Eden Esq was rewarded with an Earldom.
Secondly the ‘regicide of Lady T, buy a gang of total inadequates, driven by spite malice and envy.
Thirdly the Iraq War, when 88% of Tory MPs voted for war. A more despicable bunch of armchair, feather duster waving ‘warriors’,is hard to imagine.
This time around they are a vast improvement. They pulled off Brexit against enormous odds, and have handled the Scamdemic if not with aplomb, at least as well as might be expected in this Woke World of mass hysteria and panic.
And by comparative analysis with the US, they have not sunk to the very bottom of the pit of national depravity.*
(* The killing of Ashli Babbitt in the Capitol, and the ‘lottery win’ of $27 million for Mr George Floyd’s relatives, plus Tea & Cucumber sandwiches with Mr & Mrs Biden in the White House.)
4th) You missed Libya. You would think the fools would have leaned the lessons of Iraq (kinda makes it worst when you think about it).
Mrs T was the greatest PM of modern times, however she was losing the plot towards the end. I do wonder if the US 2 term cap would have merit over here. Though I do wish we could have reincarnated her instead of our 2nd female PM.
All MPs should have been more sceptical of Phoney Tony’s dodgy dossier.
Don’t really remember Suez other than it being a total balls up, but will take your word for it that Eden was the key culprit.
I still laugh at the idea of people having voted for Blair because they disliked sleaze.
It was a real shame that what replaced the grey man (he did shag Edwina Currie, so not a grey as his spitting image puppet after all) was far worse; we were just taken in by the charisma at the time. The irony of Black Wednesday is it was that which enabled all the growth thereafter, which went on until GFC in 2008 – the phoney was handed a golden economic legacy and he would have screwed it up if he could by joining the Euro, fortunately he was never able to make that mistake, but made plenty of others instead. Unshackling ourselves from other failed EU mechanisms will hopefully be what enables us to do it again
If I didn’t know better I’d say Ed West was a Labour. voter.
Ed West clearly has such a shallow view of reality, and/or has some serious chipS on his shoulders that cause reality to get distorted into a vindictive and nasty view. Or to say it in another more simple way…….I have seldom read an article so full of distortions explained with such a self-righteous and arrogant attitude.
Cummings is too bitter and twisted to take seriously.
From the complete outside, it looks like a guy who lied about driving to a castle to test his eyesight and lost his job, has decided to spill the beans on what he would otherwise had left unsaid—as long as he had got his way.
Will future know-it-all divas, who rarely let themselves be photographed, refrain from having been photographed in a plain white shirt or a green anorak/duchess dress, to which we then must be subjected, in endless articles about them?
“When Cummings went to court to petition the King, Boris was impressed by his loyalty, not to mention his quick wittedness, irreverence and obvious ability. Cummings cosmopolitan upbringing also gave him an edge over the more nobly born men of court.
Cummings soon began to employ his considerable talents in the King’s Great Matters.
Courtiers were quick to comment upon Cummings spectacular rise. He was described as ‘the most secret and dear counsellor unto the king’ and ‘the man who enjoys most credit with the king’.
But it was not long before cracks began to appear in Cummings and Boris`s relationship. It took little to ignite the suspicions of this tired and paranoid King, who did not hesitate to order Cummings sacking on treason and heresy. Alas in 2021 there was no way he could be sent to the Tower!
Perhaps the most compelling assessment of Cromwell / Cummings was that made by Henry VIII / Boris himself. Within just a few short months of his chief minister’s demise, the King was heard to lament the loss of ‘the most faithful servant he had ever had’.
Ha, ha, ha, history is bunk?”
>>historians won’t be as forgiving to Boris Johnson as “the people”<<
Eh, we have no way of knowing this. Look at the litany of disasters Churchill was responsible for – he’s remembered as the Blood Sweat & Tears chap. The Covid response might come to be part of a narrative of grotesque incompetence, or a blip at the start of the Glorious Pax Borisiana. Or there might be a big war and it become completely irrelevant.
This is the only really poor article I’ve read on UnHerd. If populism is built around the sovereignty of the people, what then is democracy? The word comprises two Greek words; demos and cratos, namely “people” and “power”. The British people is sovereignty in its parliament, to which it lends the power to make the laws by which we live. Unless in reality “democracy” is a sham in which the people can vote but the so-called elite remains in perpetual power.
Cummings paints a picture both of a lazy PM, he says, and a shambolic civil service. No matter how hard working a PM might be, if he pulls a lever and it isn’t connected to anything, nothing will happen. Cummings’s solution? A data driven dictatorship. I want better government but I don’t want what Cummings wants. And what about Johnson’s inspired appointment of Katie Bingham to lead Britain’s brilliantly successful vaccine procurement programme? Far more successful than the EU’s. Doesn’t he get credit for that?
Vallance said that ideally all the vulnerable would be transported to North Scotland and the rest of us could become infected. How interesting. Given the extremely low mortality among anyone under 50, why was not more consideration given to shielding the vulnerable in our own localities? With the elderly in multigenetatipnal households accommodated in commandeered hotels?
Lockdowns have condemned tens of thousands, Karol Sikora says 50000, to premature cancer deaths. Will Cummings, the high priest of lockdown, apologise to them?
This article is very disappointing and not up to the standard I expect of this forum.
Much as I dislike Boris, Cummings is saying he wasn’t *enough* of a bedwetter regarding this very discriminating disease (which should have been dealt with as per suggestions of Great Barrington Declaration), rather than criticising him for jumped on the mass hysteria bandwagon. Cummings is clearly unhinged.
Sadly Dominic has fallen off his ego, he will say anything after doing what he liked in his time in power. Also I don’t know about Conservatism and Populism of which this author writes, I can only see that if you are saying that the opposite to Boris and this “oligarchy with populist vibe” in 2019 was Monarchy, church, tradition you couldn’t be more wrong.
There were different opinions at the start of the pandemic and only with hindsight we will be able to tell who was right, I was in favour of the Sweden view but I may have been wrong, London and New York are unique hubs very difficult to treat in such a situation. Dominic didn’t have the solution he went walkies hundreds of miles so he should shut up.
This is manna from heaven for the British Betraying Corporation which if it did its job properly Corbyn, Abbott and McDonnell would have never got anywhere near Westminster, totally the wrong palace, in the days of good Queen Bess they would have gone to the other palace further down the river to be made in to two or even four pieces. When I was a kid I would have never had believed that UK Parliament would have such candidates let alone MPs. What are we doing?
The opposition to Boris was the Marxist IRA and the total destruction of all what you call England including “conservatism” starting by the Monarchy, these people refuse to sing our Anthem, they consider our flag “fascist”, their kids bring down our flags outside their schools! It was either voting for Boris and to finally leave the EU as well or that terrible anti-British alternative and very likely also some form of remaining in Europe against a democratic vote which had been ignored for years by this wonderful opposition which because the powers of the Monarch had been tampered with the leader of the Not Loyal to Her Majesty’s Opposition was writing the letters for the Prime Minister to Europe using the “law” to force this, and some clowns dressed with wigs forced to override the Queen herself and what She had signed!
The 1945 landslide put us on a curve which we started as 1/4 of the world, this fantastic opposition has left us today on that curve desperately trying to save the integrity of England itself. What is left of our greatness will not last another life time, we must get rid of Labour or England will not survive.
The first majority Labour Government split India, split the Empire and destroyed it, sending successful colonies to the wall turning them in to Refugee Manufacturing Plants where the successors of the 1945 Marxists want us to send shed loads of money and even reparations for having given them good government and made them successful economies. The best parts of our Empire are so highly prized that people from the failed de-colonisations are prepared to risk their own lives and that of their children to get in! Yet these champagne Marxists gang up with the Marxist infested British Betraying Corporation to attack mostly England where ever they can find it. One of the things they try to give us is the USA history of slavery, it was the British Empire first ever super power to put an end to slavery, but the opposition to that were the Black Nationalist Kings and Moslem African Kings who even today practice slavery and in the past were the whole-sellers of slaves! But these anti-British champagne Marxists try to blame the British for slavery which goes back to the beginning of time and today is only practiced by the Chinese, the Russians in their Empires and the Blacks in Africa on themselves.
The 1997 Marxist landslide split the UK leaving nationalisms intact against a not represented and broken up England. 20% or less of the population think that they have two votes in two nations! Not the English, we even have the risk of these little nations voting on our issues as well.
Let us not forget the exit of the 1997 Marxists leaving the “there is no money” note behind, the gold 400 metric tones gone for a song, the money of the next generation given to the banks triggering the Gordon Brown / Labour Austerity and our nation eroded by an incompatible immigration, people who they got who would vote Labour but who want to tell the English how to educate their children, what they can and can’t show to them. These immigrants are hard to distinguish from invaders because they actually come with their own laws for us to obey.
Freedom of speech and sovereignty? You are joking, these pro-Labour invaders can publish the worst things that can be done to those of us who don’t buy their terrible cult, but we can’t even make a cartoon of the guy who told them to publish those things! Even their crimes against white children are to a point racist.
If it is bad for England it is good for Labour, the Marxist Labour party is incompatible with England, unless we have a patriotic opposition Conservative is all what we can vote for and remain English at the same time. England is practically gone.
The Swedes found your Swedish view didn’t work.
Too soon to tell.
We don’t need to wait for history. Johnson is a coward, a liar and possibly the most morally bankrupt individual ever to inhabit Ten Downing Street. Once the pandemic has stopped being headline news he will have nowhere to hide. Max Hastings warning about what he is like appears more and more prescient with each passing day. History will spit on him
“most morally bankrupt individual ever to inhabit Ten Downing Street.”
Phoney Blair wins that accolade hands down.
I am in no position to be able to determine how much of what Cummings has to say may be true or correct; some of it probably self-evidently probably so, some of it more the workings of his own fevered mind. However, what I find incredulous is the media’s apparent willingness to accept anything and everything he has to say as being ‘gospel’; when not so long ago much of the same media were reluctant to believe a word that comes out of his mouth. As ever nowadays, we appear to live in a (media) world where someone is either absolutely right or absolutely wrong. To be honest, I don’t find much of any of either what Cummings has to say, or articles such as this very appealing. Notwithstanding the UK government (along with every government in the world), got some things badly wrong and others right. And I think this is what we poor punters see, because in the real world we’re all fallible; and so are politicians.
“… it’s still disastrous that the Government completely failed to respond to Covid.”
Except that HMG did respond to COVD. Whether it responded well is a different question, and one with almost as many answers as there are people. My own view is that any government faced with such a pandemic would be forced to make it up as they went along, but the trick is not to look as though you’re making it up as you go along. That is where the Johnson government failed.
Every government failed in that way too, except the Swedes who left it to the epidemiologists to make it up for them, but the s#it still ended up back on their doorstep as far as MSM were concerned. The Germans were lucky first time round but second time round they had nearly 9 times the number of deaths (and still rising because of the disastrous EU vaccination shambles created by a German puppet of the Frau) compared to UK, which had twice the deaths in the bigger longer (because it was over winter and there is a significant seasonal effect to this virus as there is to many others) second wave.
Asian governments did so much better but we didn’t want to know.
So let me get this straight. Ed West’s citation that Johnson is a proven liar, is to link to the bedroom / hatchet-job website boris-johnson-lies.com (last updated – Dec-2019). Now Johnson may well be a liar, but is this meant to be serious journalism??
I suspect no.10 however rattled will be relieved that Cummings seems to have blown his moment in the sun. So far Cummings’ testimony amounts to [we should have locked down sooner] + [the PM and his entourage are a bunch of twats]. Other more valid targets (eg the scandal of emptying care homes) appear to have been missed.
Let’s focus on the reality. We probably should have locked down a week sooner, that’s it. If you believe in lockdowns, then Boris was 7 days late. The UK was running completely as normal even as we entered March, and it took till the middle of the month for people to even think about the idea of lockdown, or that behaviour might need to be changed. Anyone saying different is either a hindsight merchant or a liar. Meantime the leader of the opposition (still Corbyn) was writing letters to the PM, urging the PM to ensure any proposed pandemic measures must first be submitted to an “equal opportunity audit” – which gives an idea of where Corbyn’s head was at. Oh yes, and urging Rishi Sunak to expedite claims for sick-pay whilst in the background Sunak had already designed the world’s biggest ever furlough scheme. So much hindsight, but only one administration was actually on the spot having to make decisions, and this is really what’s behind Johnson’s supposedly “satanic” gift for maintaining public approval.
“The more people learn about a political subject, and become more vested in it, the more extreme they tend to become and the more tribal.“
Does this apply to the Author of this article?
Can One then say it’s the Conservatives job to protect the country from these people!
‘Conservatives’ have some kind of conduit to truth & impartiality!
How reassuring, ignorance is bliss, let the elite control your future. They know best don’t they!
Give me real populist conservatives any day compared to the fake kind inhabiting Downing Street and most other European capitals. Think of the governors, like Ron de Santis, of those US states that got out of the grotesque lockdowns and mask mandates early, telling their people that if we crash our livelihoods for something close to a severe flu, we will be locking ourselves up forever. Life is not without risk. Did the people of those states lynch their governors? No! The common sense of the people contains far more wisdom than professor West can accept, if given accurate information that is not curated to suit the powergrabs of the political class, which are a far graver threat….unless they are populist conservatives of the true kind.
The Cummings-Johnson double act is politics as stage magic show. All is distraction, all is proffered and partial perception, all is dissembling.
In addition to this, all is clinical and extremely well calculated political manoeuvre.
Both are bold and ambitious, and both are risk takers.
I turned on the wireless briefly to listen in to the fallout, and heard a snap poll had five percent of those questioned thinking Johnson had fared badly as the revelations came out.
Five percent.
Far from this being Cummings’ revenge on Johnson, this is almost certainly a calculated gambit designed to reposition the Prime Minister for the aftermath of covid_19.
Cummings has set the new narrative in motion. Johnson will come to be seen as the plucky underdog who did not want lock-down but was forced into it by other members of government, the civil service, and parliament. Even then, he did his level best to mitigate against the worst effects.
This is dissembling of astonishing boldness. It will probably work.
If the mainstream media are any guide, people who should know better will fall into the trap (most have already done so) without bothering to question any of this at all.
Since you listened, Cummings criticis have started to cut through and now have more assent than dissent. The issues won’t go away, evidence will accumulate and people will be judged by the position they take.
I do so wish that journalists would stop referring to “allegations” as “revelations”.
By the way, they both should have glowing red eyes. Don’t just give them to Cummings – it’s what he wants.
Johnson is an overweight, American born, ex journalist, who has had 6 kids by 3 different women. There are some pretty good clues right there, that he might be a boastful, self obsessed liar, who only think about himself.
Hes a mini version of Trump for a country and culture that is a mini version of America.
He won the people over because he claimed to dislike the much hated EU as much as they did. That may also be a big lie.
Maybe Labour need to get a mini Sleepy Joe and start a few media witch hunt enquiries, to have a chance of winning the next election … or maybe Corbyn was a Sleepy Joe but just wasn’t bland enough
Where did I ever get the idea Ed West was a conservative? He could work for the BBC without missing a stroke.
No contradiction there.
If Dominic Cummins is the intelligent and capable driver of government improvement I am sorely disappointed. His performance at “The Committee” was poor with so much ammunition to use. I have employed more capable people at supervisor level in manufacturing industry.
The issue is not , I suggest , judging Boris. If you look at all western countries the performance level of them all (whatever methods and timings they supposedly did ) is ballpark the same (measurement of cases, deaths, hospitalisation for CV all being on different definitions).
The real thing that COVID made clear was not political lying etc etc BUT the sheer OPERATIONAL INCOMPETENCE of ALL western governments.
Senior people in Public Office are not placed there by there competence at fulfilling the role…it’s all time serving , brown nosing and back scratching.
Competent people tend to be uncomfortable people because they say it like it is. Cummins was supposed to be like that. His performance was so poor it in itself is dismissible but I agree the Care Home Murders will come out.
The lesson to learn is to find a party where competence and transparency remove patronising the British people. Preferably populated with a smattering of people who can add up.
This is unarguably correct as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough. Cummings’ contemptuous disparagement of BJ is grounded in his knowledge of things others will come to understand better ( if it’s not too inconvenient for them. ) But it’s not the main point of his testimony or main reason why he offered to testify.
Cummings is worried about the inadequacy of British institutions, problems that existed before and will remain after we are no longer afflicted by Johnson. The weaknesses exposed by CoVid are the kind he expected to find, but far more serious, beyond his self styled Promethean reach to address. ( Though it’s clear that his failure is relative, had he not been there damage of all sorts would have been far higher.)
These weaknesses do not just concern pandemics either, they are showing in what’s happening with Brexit , for example.
Cummings may not have the answers to the problems he draws attention to. He knows though that changing the crew will not be sufficient. He’ll be cross that the political media are focussing on that
Mr West, I suggest you grow up. Reading some history books would help. Robert Walpole, Britain’s first PM, was a liar and a cheat. And so it has continued. Disraeli lied, all the time, driving Gladsone to distraction in the process. So did Lloyd George, arguably one of our best PM’s in a crisis. How about Tony Blair, also known as Bliar ? Walpole – Disraeli- Lloyd George- Blair. Four of our most prominent PM’s ? Boris Johnson has worked something out, which you don’t seem to have: lying is part and parcel of being a senior politician, and, from time to time, being placed in impossible positions, or when your information is grossly inadequate. Anti-Bojo sentiment is par for the course from Remainer-land, but this piece needs to do much more to convince.
“We’ll see” said the Zen master.
As per Vickram Sharma below this is pretty silly speculation. If i were to bet i’d say that a rational, evidence based actor like Cummings will not be allowed to write history, he will be history. This is because the people that write history in academia and in historical drama are at best screeching adolescants, and at worst a 5th column of hate filled agents for hostile foreign powers such as Russia and Iran and sadly now China, who i think we should have kept on side for economic as well as strategic reasons. So they are both terrified of and hostile to anything evidence based.
He’s a clever chap and certainly knows his Shakespeare …. “ I come not to bury Caesar, but to praise him “. We need a little time and perspective to judge the accuracy and power of this smooth, carefully thought-out masterpiece of character assassination.
Notwithstanding the sour grapes, I feel inclined to take seriously a good deal of what Cummings said. In medical terms, Boris is not yet flat-lining .. but has possibly lost a kidney!!
I agree with some of what the author wrote, but believe the article is premature. It’s early days and the proverbial blade has only just plunged in. Cumming’s delivery demonstrates some unattractive, vindictive intent, but comes from someone who should NOT be under-estimated.
Is interesting thanks ,,peoples willing to be patriotism fans&this are the conservatives, in a reality of peoples.
Honesty are not a policy from politicians&of course not Bòjò.
U.K trougth conservative party a elites faraway from a real world, sample of that,,(British are the best client of China dictatorship in the last two years, expend more that Germany’s & more that eny one in the planet.
Support for the country with no humans rights, animals rights or eny other rigths.
At the moment no one knows abaut covi19 source,,but British people do not care about,,so Mr Ed West peoples will ???what a meaning is that???)
For the freedom of our kids ,,you have ansawer ???
Excellent article. “whether an issue cuts through with the public” is controlled in large part by the main stream media, the press, and the political spin created by those who benefit by contorting, distorting, and deceit. Will any truth be exposed in the history books? Hopefully! But if any truth is documented then those will be among the first books to burn when the Leftists take power.
Does MSM have any shred of credibility left? Between its disastrous performance during COVID and its near total capture by woke, does anyone really pay any attention to it. I used to pick up the Sun when it was lying on a table to look at the tits and the cartoons, but gave up when the tits went. I have not watched any news broadcast for months. I still think the bbc.com weather forecast is about the best for giving me useful information that helps me plan my life, but that is about it.
“the fact that the Government incompetently shunted Covid patients into care homes and in doing so killed thousands of people hardly made an impact.”
Worse than that. If they haven’t managed to get them back home with proper support, they are cutting off their housing benefit, potentially leaving them penniless, homeless, and forced to stay in a home for the rest of their days. So much for the sacrifices we all made to “save the elderly”.
General Wavell once wrote that the human race is so inefficient in matters of peace and war…and people of fine intelligence either resign themselves to it or fret badly especially if they are near the heart of things and can see matters which ought to be done or done better and contrive to get them set right.
I may add that Cummings said nothing new and in the end its the final result that really matters, as world War II PROVED.
Speculating on how badly Corbyn might have managed the pandemic is irrelevant. We will never know for sure how he would have coped. It only serves to deflect responsibility from where it should rightfully rest – on the shoulders of Johnson,his Cabinet members and the scientists.
Comparing the UK performance with the rest of the world is also a pointless exercise because – as has already been noted – countries record deaths in different ways, and some don’t get to record all of them.
There are some things that Johnson could easily have got right – such as putting test and trace in the hands of local authorities who were better placed to know what was going on on their own patches.Instead we got the clown d***o Harding who managed to run a mobile phone company into the ground and that arch-loser, Serco. Other contracts were awarded to Tory friends and donors without even a track record of providing suitable equipment such as PPE and ventilators. Nightingale hospitals were erected at vast expense and never used – because the NHS didn’t have enough staff to cover them. If the government had done its homework properly,it could have discovered this fact for itself.
There was also clear evidence prior to the March 2020 lockdown and the January 2021 lockdown that the pandemic was spiralling out of control – but Johnson as usual was frightened of becoming unpopular, and so tried to avoid making a decision. This resulted in lockdowns lasting for much longer than they might have otherwise needed to.
Now he threatens to make the same mistake again by reopening the economy too soon when the Indian variant is already spreading in various local authopity areas. It would have helped if he had stopped flights coming in from India straightaway instead of allowing a week’s grace after the announcement – thus allowing infected people into the UK who were free to go on their merry way spreading infection to all and sundry.
In the past, politicians were forced to resign for much less than this appalling show of basic incompetence. It just shows how far we have sunk as a nation that pressure on Johnson and his Cabinet ministers is not being exerted now.
As someone who has just had first hand experience of Her Majesty’s Border Force and, tragically, the fiasco that is the quarantine system, I believe it all. I’m paying 175 GBP per night in a quarantine hotel which costs 80 GBP if you go off the street. HM government is charging a 95 GBP per night administration fee and providing food that I wouldn’t eat on an aeroplane. It is worse than what I’ve seen in Zimbabwe, and that’s saying something.
The “advice” not to go abroad never really had anything to do with the virus itself. Had they told you you would be better off not going because we will screw your life up when you get back, would you have gone?
There has been a lot of hastily enacted legislation and policy that has little sound scientific backing and even less parliamentary scrutiny (not that we have a real opposition to do it effectively anyway) that has put far too much power into the hands of bureaucrats, who have neither the intellectual capacity nor the resources to implement it humanely. The person responsible for a lot of that, before he was sacked, was Cummings.
All governments faced with a danger whose impact and consequences are unknown will twist and turn and make mistakes until some reasonable solution can be found. The worst verifiable one was the decanting of untested old folks from hospitals into care homes where they quickly spread the disease. But the on off lockdowns and variable advice has not been too disastrous. However the furlough scheme worked well. The final outcome is still uncertain but it looks as if the vaccine will work and a return to something like normal is on the horizon. So it could have been a lot worse and the government will be judged to have done not too badly, despite some mistakes.
Indeed. What really matters now is rebuilding our economy outside the EU and achieving the promised levelling up to create a better balanced, fairer and less divided society for our children who have been the real victims of all this despite being the least vulnerable to the virus. Has beens like Cummings should be consigned to the footnotes of history.
Nothing like that likely to happen.
The way I remember things playing out bears no resemblance to the, now considered sacrosanct, media’s version of it. There’s also this strange notion that MPs and the government can (or should) control every aspect of our lives and that it can (or should) be able to stop anythings happening to any of us. Ever. This mindset is bizarre. We have progressively handed over more and more responsibility for our own lives to a bunch of bureaucrats and then moan when they ‘let us down’. And the ‘letting us down’ appears to be judged by a media with its own agenda and a predilection for focusing on spurious gossip and personal attacks. If you say Boris is a liar enough times it must be true right? So he doesn’t just tell a fib now and again (most of which have no material effect on any of our lives and which we wouldn’t know about without the media), every word out of his mouth must be a malevolent falsehood. And because we don’t say this about, say, Diane Abbott, well then she doesn’t lie. If the media doesn’t like you they will find a way to make sure nobody does. Facts, nuance and reality be damned
The biggest myth that needs busting is that government policy was the main factor driving how many people died in various countries. It was a significant factor among a load of other significant factors. If we put a bit more intellectual effort into understanding those then just maybe when something similar happens again we might do better.
I don’t suppose the people will care much about historians. As you say it will interest more the University crowd who have little handle on what is going on. Incompetence – whose? Boris’ or the “scientists”? Laziness? It is well known he is averse to detail (he can hire people for that) but he’s hardly sitting at home scoffing chocolates. Callousness – you mean like Mrs Thatcher? But duplicitous, yes that could be his undoing. If he doesn’t deliver on what got him there, i.e. Brexit, i.e. for most people immigration. If he doesn’t “level up” the country – well up North betrayal doesn’t go down well. He will lose most of his present voters. Maybe he is hanging on to get the next generations’ vote : the woke one with the green, inclusive agenda. Right now he is trying to have a leg in each camp.
“John Major’s government had given us 16 consecutive quarters of economic growth by the time of the 1997 election, but at that point, the memory of Black Wednesday had seared itself into the collective memory.” Black Wednesday led pretty directly to Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont inaugurating the inflation targeting regime at the Bank of England that has served Britain well ever since. How come that gets so little attention?
Because Blair shiny shiny, innit, like Cool Britannia and sh(t and everything and things can only get better and Major is just so grey and so boring and well we just bored and wants a change though.
I don’t doubt for one minute that most of what is written and spoken about the current government is true. The torrent of criticism may well hit home, it may be well founded and the alternative is………? Cue a deafening silence.
He’s RE-writing history.
Ed West has been living in a desirable area of London for some time now and he seems gradually to be ceasing to be a conservative … Going native as they used to say. Boris government has delivered Brexit, and a solid vaccination program. He needs to reform the Supreme Court so it consistent with the supremacy of Parliament, scrap the wretched Fixed term parliament act and bring some prosperity to the Red Wall seats. Do that and who cares what a mess he is personally! Fail and who cares what a mess he is personally.
Dante had the measure of Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings:
“Io vidi due ghiacciati in una buca, / sì che l’un capo a l’altro era cappello; / e come ’l pan per fame si manduca, / così ’l sovran li denti a l’altro pose / là ’ve ’l cervel s’aggiugne con la nuca: / non altrimenti Tidëo si rose / le tempie a Menalippo per disdegno, / che quei faceva il teschio e l’altre cose.”
The people are not as thick as you make out. They can see Cummings is a left wing authoritarian and the PM is not. They can see Cummings has tunnel vision while the PM sees all the ramifications. The people don’t like someone who kisses and tells. The PM never does that.
When is Boris and his government going to be properly criticised for the things he / they really did get wrong. At the moment the criticisms all imply he was not authoritarian enough, he did not deny well people their civil liberties enough, he did not screw our economy enough, he did not damage our children’s futures enough. All countries made grave mistakes the first time round and that has to be viewed in the context of the nature of crisis management. However, whilst it is clear that a lot of good lessons were learned for the entirely predictable second wave – tests, PPE vaccines and additional hospital capacity (the 2nd peak in hospitalisations in Jan 21 was nearly double the first peak in Apr 20 and in ICU it was nearly 25% higher), no lessons were learned regarding modifying behaviour at a societal level in a consensual non authoritarian manner. It was still the same old trite slogans and complex ever changing rules backed by hastily enacted laws that had little or no parliamentary scrutiny and certainly no thought of balancing against the harm all this was doing in the longer term. All of which were counter productive to the consensual modification of behaviour at the individual level, which unless you have the security apparatus of China, is the only way to achieve it at the societal level. Then there is the fear that still exists and is still being played upon with “Indian variant”. Why has no one asked why when excess deaths have been negative in every other setting (hospitals and care homes being the main ones) for weeks now, are they still firmly positive in peoples own homes? Are people still afraid to go to hospital when they need to for fear of catching the virus?
As for Cummings, maybe he should be arrested and charged for his visit to the castle stunt – can’t be beyond the statute of limitations – he knew the rules because he had a hand in writing them. Lock that Scottish MP b***h up too.
Does it not seem strange that for years the left of centre have accused Cummings of being a rabid liar, yet now that he makes these claims against the government they believe every word?
The truth will come out in the public inquiry, with participants giving evidence under oath. Until then let’s focus on the task of getting back to normality. Nothing else matters.
Truth will come out wherever and however it will, we have to focus on the evidence not the personality game. There will be lots of filters around the official enquiry, trust more in what just comes out.
The really important thing is how did it start. That is going to be the dominant theme for years into the future. Because everything flows from this. And if it should have been as a result ,accidental or not, of human behaviour then the future is going to be made in many ways by this fact.
Each country to a greater or lesser extent dealt with the virus as best it could but every country was reacting not initiating.
The writing of history on grand scale misgovernment, e.g. the Second Iraq War, doesn’t seem to bother Blair in the slightest.
The origins of the pandemic, and how the world’s media obscured it (as well as the effectiveness of a range of treatments for it already on the market) in order to get an orange man out of the White House will ultimately be more important to ‘history’ than how the government handled its arrival in the UK.
Ditto the stealing of the 2020 US presidential election.
All this is very small beer.
The only “blame” that can be laid at the feet of for this pandemic is squarely aimed at the the vile communist dictatorship of the CCP, much like the Soviet Union under Khrushchev, China has a lowly ignorant evil peasant running the country
And yet they and their Taiwanese enemies have done better than any of us. Happy to leave things like that?
We don’t know how well the Chinese do, but the Taiwanese cannot be compared to us. They may have developed some degree of immunity from being exposed to SARS etc. How much obesity, diabetes, old age do they have compared to us? Do they have a Heathrow? Are they a hub in the way London and New York are? Did they count their deaths from the Wuhan virus as we and the Belgians did, or as the rest of the world did? How big is their population? And how diverse?