Sunak and lockdowns

He's hoping we all forget that he was front and centre of the hysterical panic in 2020.

It seems like, just because it’s a Tory leadership contest, Sunak and Truss can say and promise whatever they like.

Admittedly, I haven’t been following much of the hustings. I find the contest boring and far too long. There can be no question that the time it has taken, whilst the energy crisis rages and there is a general rise in crime and disorder, has cost them votes. I have also found some of the headline grabbing comments from the contestants a bit of a joke, with Truss’s claim that she will ensure the police are “policing the streets and not Twitter,” as a particular favourite of mine. The cynic in me says this will not happen. I am making the bold prediction that non-crime hate crime will still be a thing long into her premiership, as will the policing of offence. The police will still be dancing the macarena at ‘Pride' events, whilst burglary and violence continue, unabated.

But most interesting was Sunak’s comments on lockdowns. He claims that too much power was given to the scientists during the Covid crisis and there was not enough honesty to actually consider the downsides. This is, of course, completely true. I find it totally sickening that to have said this at the time got you branded as all sorts of cruel things. Now this seems to be the accepted position.

That’s fine. But the problem I have is that you just can’t believe a word he says. In fact, I am slightly insulted by his claims that ramping up the fear was the wrong thing to do. This is clearly a vain attempt to wash his hands of all the mud that stuck to them since the Covid shutdowns. It was also entirely predictable. I have said many times over that when the full costs of the Covid panic are laid bare before us (and they are starting to now) there will be many who will retreat from its support. We are seeing this all around us with the gradual breakdown of the institutions that we rely on for daily life to the inflation which is crippling us all – inflation which was as high as seven per cent before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

What struck me very early in the pandemic response and the hysteria that followed it, is that an easy parallel could be drawn with this panic and that of the Iraq War. Speak against it, and you are a covid "denier”. Question the narrative of Saddam having WMD and you were an apologist for terrorism. And so, asking for any evidence to say the NHS would've collapsed was treated in the same way as questioning if a rocked could be launched from Baghdad to London in forty-five minutes. Questioning if closing schools was the right thing to do (you'll be hard pressed even now to find anyone who thinks that was still a good idea) was treated the same as saying in what way is sending British service personnel to die in the desert serving British interests? How has closing schools benefitted children?

And, just like with Iraq, it was popular and important to be seen to be on the "good" side. But once the horrors of this mistake were there for all to see, those people vanished without a trace. The same is now happening with lockdowns.

But why Sunak?

My guess is that Sunak knows what is coming. Being Chancellor, he'll know the numbers and will be aware of the economic mess coming down the line as a result of lockdowns; debt and inflationary pressure which he helped to cause. I suspect that’s why he's trying now to distance himself from this oncoming catastrophe. He's hoping we all forget that he was front and centre of the hysterical panic in 2020.

What is also clear is that Sunak now realises the Government’s response to Covid was the wrong one. If there is any good to come from that, it is the hope that this sorry episode should never be repeated.