Having read Dominic Cummings’ twitter thread on the Government’s lack of preparedness for the pandemic – I had 10 hours to spare and thought, ‘Why not?’ – I began to suspect that Boris might be a lockdown sceptic. The central plank of Dom’s case against the PM in his thread is that he should have locked down earlier and the reason he didn’t is that he naively thought that a policy of shielding the elderly and vulnerable, and encouraging symptomatic people to quarantine at home, would mean ~60% of the population would become infected over the summer, thereby avoiding a second wave in the autumn/winter, when the NHS would have found it harder to cope due to the annual winter NHS crisis – the so-called ‘herd immunity’ strategy. Hmmm. Sounds pretty sensible to me – and to get an idea of how that would have worked out, we only have to look at Sweden, which avoided a hard lockdown throughout 2020 and had one of the lowest age-adjusted excess mortality rates in Europe.
Dom tries to swat this argument away in his thread, accusing “UK political pundits” of “spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns”, and compares Sweden unfavourably with Denmark. A pretty feeble response, as we’ve pointed out numerous times on Lockdown Sceptics. (see Noah Carl’s piece on Monday for a comprehensive rebuttal of the “Yeah, but, Denmark” critique of Sweden’s approach.) No, the example of Sweden, which refused to lock down and whose health service never came close to being overwhelmed, remains a devastating riposte to the apocalyptic doom-mongering of people like Dom back in March of last year, who were screaming at the Prime Minister to lock everyone in their homes because… the NHS.
As I say, reading that thread, it seems pretty clear that Boris’s instincts were correct and the reason he switched tack in the week leading up to March 23rd was because he was surrounded by bed-wetting hysterics like Mr Cummings.
But today’s Daily Mail confirms it: Boris is a lockdown sceptic. I’ll let the Mail summarise the “explosive allegations”, which Dom has clearly leaked to them:
Boris Johnson referred to Covid as “Kung-Flu” and – before he was infected with the virus – offered to be injected with it live on TV to “show it’s nothing to be scared of”, Dominic Cummings will claim today.
They are among the explosive allegations that Mr Cummings, Mr Johnson’s former chief adviser, will make to MPs investigating the Government’s handling of the epidemic.
In an extraordinary claim, he will accuse the Prime Minister of being responsible for “thousands of deaths” by delaying a second lockdown when a second wave of the virus hit the U.K. in the winter. …
The Mail has learned that Mr Cummings will allege Mr Johnson:
* Argued against tough Covid curbs on the grounds that “it is only killing 80-year-olds”;
* Did say “no more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands”.
* Said he regretted being “pushed” into ordering lockdowns because the “economic damage is more damaging than the loss of life”.
No doubt Boris could have expressed his scepticism more diplomatically – assuming Dom is telling the truth – but the substance of these points is correct: for those under 65 and with no underlying health conditions, the virus is nothing to be scared of; the average age of those who’ve died from COVID-19 in the UK is about 80; and the economic damage caused by the lockdowns will certainly outweigh the harms the lockdowns have prevented, if any.
Should anyone be in any doubt that Boris is a 64 carat lockdown sceptic, Dom has some more “devastating” points:
Mr Cummings will also say that before the decision, Mr Johnson vowed: “I’m going to be the mayor of Jaws, like I should have been in March (when the first lockdown was ordered).”
The Prime Minister has said that he regards the mayor in the Jaws movie – who refuses to close the resort’s beach even after a shark has killed tourists, for fear of damage to the local economy – as one of his “heroes”.
I must say, I take some comfort from this. Regular readers will know that until that fateful U-turn on March 23rd 2020 I was a huge fan of Boris’s and have struggled to reconcile the Rabelaisian, liberty-loving character I’ve known for the past 38 years with the furrowed-browed headmaster of the last 15 months. As I asked the journalist Quentin Letts in our recent Free Speech Union chat: How did Sid James become Hattie Jacques?
Turns out, Boris’s Jamesian side wasn’t entirely abandoned; it was just just kept in check by the Jacquists in 10 Downing Street.
Presumably, one reason Boris allowed himself to be pushed around by these chin-wobblers is because he was worried they’d accuse him of needlessly killing thousands of people if he didn’t do what they said. In which case, Dom’s suicide bomber routine is actually quite helpful. Boris allowed Dom to browbeat him into following his lockdown strategy and the disloyal bastard is still accusing him of being a mass murderer. So Boris has little to lose from ignoring these Cassandras from now on. They’ll turn on him whatever he does so there’s no point in trying to keep them on side.
It’s time to assert yourself, Prime Minister. At the next meeting of the Cabinet, announce that you’re going to reopen on June 21st come hell or high water and anyone who thinks that’s a bad idea should resign now or forever hold their peace. Thereafter, if the usual suspects start briefing against stage 4 of the Roadmap, including those snakes on SAGE, he should sack the bloody lot of them.
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I voted for him but he was too weak to get rid of the obviously failing sage, the disaster that is Neil Ferguson. He is overseeing the coercing of the young into into taking an experimental jab that has not finished its trials .. He is allowing that fanatic Gove to push for vaccine passports. The embarrassment Hancock still has a job – his fake crying alone should have got him the sack….No, sadly Boris Johnson has been and continues to be disaster. He needs to find some guts and some backbone He must take control and stop this whole fiasco NOW…
However enjoyable it is to see the show of Cummings attacking Hancock; today promoted Lockdowns, in advance of future lockdowns.
We know more is coming. Let’s not buy Boris as a Lockdownsceptic. He’s a puppet at bet. Judge these people by their actions not their spin.
No. He is not a lockdown sceptic. No real sceptic would ever say that it was ‘really important that everyone understands that lockdowns caused the reduction in hospitalisations and deaths’ as the pig dictator did. A real sceptic would have sidelined the zealots, embraced the sceptics and held out against the media pressure whilst steering the narrative his way (see Governors DeSantis and Noem). Tyrant Johnson is a spineless tumour with no morals, beliefs or principles who would say or do anything for a whiff of popularity.
Correct. Kim Jong Johnson’s pronouncements are great, fat, communist and fraudulent.
“I must say, I take some comfort from this. Regular readers will know that until that fateful U-turn on March 23rd 2020 I was a huge fan of Boris’s and have struggled to reconcile the Rabelaisian, liberty-loving character I’ve known for the past 38 years with the furrowed-browed headmaster of the last 15 months. As I asked the journalist Quentin Letts in our recent Free Speech Union chat: How did Sid James become Hattie Jacques?
Turns out, Boris’s Jamesian side wasn’t entirely abandoned; it was just just kept in check by the Jacquists in 10 Downing Street.”
I think this tells us everything we need to know about the editorial policy of LDS, ATL at least. Worries me somewhat.
There can be no redemption for Johnson. He and his cartel of conspiring cronies are in Tony Blair territory, the latter has had far too much interference in all of this as well.
A jail cell would be far too kind for these disgusting evil people.
Newsflash
Boris’ former employer (and recipient of over £3 million of Bill Gates’ money in the last couple of years) The Daily Telegraph concludes that Boris is a great bloke and definitely never does anything wrong. He might even be an angel they said. Perhaps even god himself. Or Jesus.
End of Newsflash.
In latest news.. Toby believes every accusation that Dominic Cummings is making makes total sense. There defininitely isn’t some kind of strange manouverings going on.
In other Toby News.. Bill Gates is a nice man and Epstein didn’t kill himself. Nor did that nuclear inspector chappy.
No. Boris like Trudeau, Sturgeon, Macron, Biden etc. is a compromised puppet leader and local executor (whether willingly or through bribery/coercion) of a globalist power grab.
The thing is, Cummings was right, spot on, from a political point of view, which is all they care about. At the start, Johnson could have got rid of a couple of bedwetters and Sage and the rest would have fallen into line to go for herd immunity and the Swedish approach. But then they’d have had to try and influence the MSM not to sensationalise and exaggerate the death count – a near-impossible task. They’d already started. I’ve said right from the beginning that the MSM is to blame for all this. Along with weak politicians.
Agree about the weak politicians. A weak politican in a time of crisis who knowing does the wrong thing is worse than useless.
As for blaming the media, sorry, that won’t wash. They have been dreadful, but a lot of that has been following the government lead, and with government money.
If you’re the PM of the UK with a huge majority and a 5 year term, the “a big boy made me do it” argument doesn’t wash.
“a near-impossible task” Well some leaders managed it. The PM did not attempt it, in fact did the opposite.
The Govt allowed Cheltenham to go ahead, and a Liverpool-Atletico Madrid match too. They were getting a lot of flak for that, from all sides, from all media, and from Labour. But I’m not trying to exculpate Johnson at all. He was weak.
I think the Govt was following the media, rather than the other way round. They didn’t pay the media so as to hype and exaggerate the death toll. There was no need – they were going to do it anyway, in fact were already doing it. They paid them and gave them ‘Guidance’ so as to exclude any criticism of the lockdown and restrictions and keep the public totally unaware that there was any opposition.
Since March 2020 the government, led by the PM, has doubled down on the insane narrative at every opportunity and made no attempt to return to rationality, despite having many chances to do so. Point to a single action of the government or any of its agencies that is indicative of scepticism, love of truth, genuine concern for public health, respect for democracy, desire for genuine. “weak” does not cover it, sorry. They are wicked, vain, arrogant, dishonest.
MSM was getting big money whole way through pandemic for the advertising campaign they ran for the government – govt was effectively funding many of the print media via that ad revenue – therefore media was bought and had no option but to stick with govt narrative – SPI-B drafted it and media published it
and he is still doing it
Only vaccinated people allowed….
I can’t help feeling todays Cummings show is all a massive distraction designed to rehabilitate Boris with libertarian leaning conservatives (and the apparent Cummings/BoJo fallout is about as real as Goves apparent backstabbing of BoJo when the Brexit winds were uncertain ) , and prevent anyone asking the real questions, ie is Covid19 a massive NATO hoax to neuter populist Trump and populist Brexit, using the scientific/financial ‘elite’ to effect this…. Call me a suspicious sod….
“Lockdown is President Obama’s Responsibility
I have previously called for some investigation into the decision by President Obama to use PDD2 (Presidential Decision Directive no.2) to transfer massive power to WHO just 4 days before President Trump won the election in 2016. I have also, by mistake, previously believed and propagated a lie published by The ECDC in Sweden, as it is found on their website, falsely explaining the background to their conference proceedings of 2017. These were the first ECDC conference proceedings where a new protocol of “social distancing” was introduced, pre-determining from that point on that any future WHO declaration of any pandemic would make it European policy to lockdown.
The ECDC lie states these new protocols, as found on the website in their introduction to the publication of their conference proceedings, were the result of WHO’s response to The Ebola crisis in Africa 2014-2016. The truth is, for which further investigation is required, and should be assumed from the precise timing of President Obama’s decision to transfer such big powers 4 days before a pro-Brexit American president Trump was elected, that the thinking behind them is nothing to do with Ebola. I propose that investigators will be… Read more »
Very interesting. I hadn’t heard this.
To my mind the whole Cummings Show is a diversionary tactic to distract the enquiry from asking the real questions, i.e. How real a threat was Cov19, how proportionate was the insane response, and who was responsible for this chimera…
Tobes – stop calling him Dom. Call him Creep Cummings or the Whitehall Weirdo or something else – even Mr Cummings. I know he’s probably your mate but, well, that is part of the problem really isn’t it?
And if Johnson is-were a lockdown sceptic, then that makes everything worse. That means a Digital ID sceptic and a Lockdown Sceptic is taking us into a horrendous dystopia even though he doesn’t believe in the principles of the new dispensation. That’s really appalling
Toby is still avoiding the issue. Cummings says a September LD would have averted the ‘new-variant’ death-surge at Christmas and New Year, a surge that followed a nationwide vertical take-off 2 weeks earlier in PCR-positives which itself exactly tracked the vaccine rollout. And was nefariously blamed on a rampant new variant of the virus.
Hancock ordered an embargo on Lighthouse Lab test results. To this day, we have no visibility of the various positive rates of the labs, or of the correlation of test-positives with vaccination status.
At Christmas, frail elderly and already very sick people, prioritised for jabbing, began dropping dead all over the country. In care homes in England alone, an extra 4,000 deaths occurred in the following 8 weeks, and an extra 20,000 occurred in the country at large. These were deaths of the very people – the only people, in fact – at any risk of death from the virus. Hancock ordered vax-status omitted as a data entry from death-certificates (so the ONS would not pick up the connection), pulled the Pfizer1 jab, substituting the Oxford, and ordered a cover up, knowing that the truth would kill his jab-‘em-all plan dead in the water. His yellow-card… Read more »
Quite. And all this is being covered up by hundreds of MSM journos who smile at us and tell us they are honest reporters.
No more appeasement Toby.
”The era of procrastination, of half-measures of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”
W. Churchill.
I am in complete agreement with the last paragraph of this piece, Toby.
Yup…though I can think of more far more painful retribution to be vested on ‘The snakes on SAGE’… probs involving hot pokers…
Interesting stuff coming out of Cummings’s mouth. “The PM’s view was that the real danger was not the disease but the measures we take against the disease and the economic consequences”
Well who’d have thought it?
I believe Toby is essentially right on this matter. Johnson is a libertarian by instinct, but he ran scared of certain leading members of SAGE and their friends in the broadcast media. It might have helped if Johnson had a scientific background – that at least might have enabled him to ask the right sorts of questions and to insist on a cost-benefit analysis of any lockdown measures. As it was, he was simply the wrong man at the wrong hour.
I don’t have a scientific background, but I managed to work out just from “official” information that the whole thing is bollocks. My mother in law never made it to secondary school but knows it’s bollocks.
Sorry, the Nuremberg Defence is not applicable to leaders.
Aye..it takes time though, the lizards kept BigBozza too busy to think for himself….
It’s worth noting, that I know from personal experience, the higher ups in PHE and the security services pride themselves on manipulating politicians to achieve their long term goals…I do suspect BigBozza was bounced… and probably did put up the salty resistance quoted…
Kim Jong Johnson is a great fat communist fraud.
Well, we all knew Boris’s weaknesses. They’ve been documented often enough. He doesn’t like to do the hard work, he wants to be liked and he’s easily pushed around. He often seems to me to be like Bishop Proudie in Barchester Towers. Gove as the Archdeacon – the man who thinks he should have had the job, Cummings as Slope – the schemer manipulating things in the background and of course Carrie as Mrs Proudie – the one who really makes all the decisions.
I dare say in the next few months and in particular when you meet up with relatives at Christmas you will hear a familiar refrain “of course, I was always a lockdown sceptic”
Poor old Toby – bereft at the loss of his idiot erstwhile friend. The misanthropic, self-seeking idiocy is long established. This is just a revelation of it.
W’ve all had to come to terms with this syndrome – but excuses don’t do it.
Clearly you don’t think that the plan from day one was exactly what we’ve ended up with.
The ENDGAME is the Global ID linked to digital cash and a health passport.
You seem to think that the Lockdown (might as well call it LockSTEP) strategy is just a big cock-up, not something running to a co-ordinated agenda worldwide.
Have you considered that there is considerable evidence of a global synchronisation in the Official Narrative, Toby?
I am more inclined to think that Johnson is the useful idiot. A puppet on the string of his real masters.
His image is carefully crafted by them, primarily as a hedge.
At the very least, he has no balls.
Indeed, and leadership requires balls.
yep!
I agree with Toby. Michael O’Bernicia says all the evidence in his case points to Hancock and the advisors as the culprits and Boris’ hands are tied. I personally think Gove is in on it too. The media are also driving the agenda rather than simply reporting it. Boris can’t just sack them without the support of the party. Plus they probably have so much dirt on him that they can force a resignation if he acts out of line. I suspect he is being held to ransom and is waiting to find a way to out manoeuvre them. The recent leaks about interior design and paid for holidays were warning signals to him. I feel it is only the public who can save us now by refusing the vaccine passport and holding out until the lawyers can break ground on their cases.
I don’t think the Nuremberg Defence is applicable to arguably one of the most popular PMs in history.
“waiting to find a way to out manoeuvre them” How long is he going to wait? Until 100% of the population has been injected with an “emergency” experimental vaccine?
Given Gove’s previous history of loyalty to Bozo I would guess he’s the one doing the Brutus bit, with Wancock on a promise of Foreign Secretary when Gove takes over. Why on earth did Gove get back into Government after his previous knifing of Bozo?? Trust is like virginity, once it’s gone, it’s gone
“Boris can’t just sack them without the support of the party”
Of course he can. But a self-seeking egomaniac wouldn’t.
What you think is totally irrelevant Toby. It’s what you DO that marks you as a leader. If this was against what you believed why did he not resign? Why carry on doing something? Do you not understand Toby this is ALL bullshit designed to catch the attention of the review board and stop them asking. Why lockdown? Who decided to abandon 50 years of pandemic advice on something never done before?. Why put sick people back into care homes effectively condemning them to death? Why not reopen when it became obvious it was not a serious illness and the nhs was not being overwhelmed? Why close down schools when no children were ill? Why masks after the pandemic was over? Why keep air travel open when it was known the disease came from China? Why take advise from Ferguson when his models were absolutely shit and overstating 11 times the actual number of fatalities. Who decided to stop autopsies allowing many deaths to be misdiagnosed? And many others, feel free to jump on this thread and add any I might have missed. The fat pig dictator and handjob are fucking useless and have terrified the population without any justification… Read more »
Well said!
If he is, he’s a funny way of showing it. He is the Boss, the buck stops with him; he has the final say. Seems total bullshit to me by Cummings. Another unelected c*nt that wielded massive power over the people and who was to blame for that; Boris.
The Cummings-Johnson polarity feels like a cleverly-scripted piece of distraction theatre.
Reading a viewpoint about the past that overlooks the dimensions of the crisis is to understate or overstate what we faced early in 2020. I was getting my info direct from China in January 2020 and in the months that followed. I knew what was coming and from my perspective Boris completely failed in the job he was supposed to do. The levers of Government are immense in a crisis and in the weeks that Boris ignored the virus’s potential plans could not have been put together when, after all, there was time for this. Data from China, Italy and the laboratories could have led to a coherent plan. This could have been to go for herd immunity, taking total control of care for the elderly and stopping agency workers going into different Homes, and, identifying the vulnerable in the community who needed isolation and support. It would have been hard to achieve but instead of a cross party consensus he went for the narrow thinking of right wing ideology. Boris basically messed up. Dom Cumming’s revelations today are an irrelevance in my book. Time has moved on and we are left with a Government of questionable quality, ability and… Read more »
Oh puleeeeaaase. We have had this discussion in so many disguises over the months. Fact is not what his natural instincts may be, our current PM has acted in a way they would give the lie to that. We are where we at because the people in charge, and he is where the buck stops, have taken certain actions.
I, like may here, find myself at odds with many of my nearest and dearest. I love them so need to keep contact but they are so scared and brainwashed, even the well educated scientists, that some of them want to keep exercising precautions even when double jabbed.
The government, led by the current PM, has caused this fear and rift in families. The virus didn’t do it.
Bang on.
‘led by the current PM’ exactly WasSteph.
If he had wanted to do it differently – as PM does he not have the power to make it happen (although didn’t Obama say in despair that even as President he couldn’t actually do anything?).
If you are excusing the PM but just saying he was too scared or too influenced by the mad group around him (whatever their own devious agenda’s) simply is not good enough. Mind you, can anyone here think of another person in the current political masses that are any good? ie have balls and brains and are prepared to be unpopular?
My family think there are only 2 things that worries the PM – not being liked – and himself. He’s got his 5 years in the limelight sown up. What else matters?
What is this pish??
No
He is not
or else there would have been no lockdowns
number 4 incoming
Seems like a convoluted way for Boris to be on both sides of history. A calculating cunt if ever there was one.