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Lord Sumption: The Truth About Lockdown is Becoming Impossible to Deny – It Was a Disaster

by Toby Young
28 August 2022 10:45 AM

Lord Sumption has written a piece for the Sunday Times about the lockdown policy that could be called ‘I Told You So’ – or, since some anger is surely justified, ‘I F***ing Told You So’. Here is an extract:

It was always obvious that you could not close down a country for months on end without serious consequences. The shocking thing that emerges from Sunak’s interview is that the government refused to take them into account. There was no assessment of the likely collateral costs of lockdown. There was no cost-benefit analysis. There was no planning. In government the issues were not even discussed. Sunak’s own attempts to raise them hit a brick wall. Ministers took refuge in evasive buck-passing, claiming to be “following the science”.

Yet the critical question was never a scientific one. It was a political question, in which the likely hospital admissions and deaths from Covid were just one element. The scientists said it was not their job to think about the social or economic implications of their advice. They were right about that. The problem was it turned out to be no one else’s job.

We are still paying for this negligence, and our children and grandchildren will be paying for it for decades to come. In 2020, U.K. GDP fell by nearly a tenth, the biggest hit to the economy for at least a century. According to Treasury estimates, 460,000 people left the workforce never to return. The policy took a wrecking ball to the public finances. The IMF estimates that government spending rose by more than £400 billion, or about £6,000 for every man, woman and child. Most of this was unproductive spending. It went on paying people for not working and supporting businesses forced to cease operations. At one point, in the spring of 2020, the government was spending about twice as much on compensating for the lockdown as it was on the NHS. Borrowing rose to £330 billion, a peacetime record.

Then there are the non-financial costs. Other mortal conditions went undiagnosed and untreated. In October 2020, after four months of lockdown, the Office for National Statistics reported more than 25,000 excess deaths at home from conditions such as cancer, heart disease and dementia. A year after the last lockdown ended, the NHS still has a vast backlog. Excess deaths, 95% of them due to conditions other than Covid, are running at about 1,000 a week. There has been a huge impact on mental health, with children and the poor worst affected.

Children lost two terms of face-to-face schooling. The closure of schools, training establishments and universities slowed the accumulation of skills, reducing productivity. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated the cost to the economy at somewhere between £90 billion and £350 billion. The best-off, with plenty of resources at home, will probably recover. Those who are already disadvantaged will be permanently damaged. Existing inequalities will grow a lot worse.

The lockdown was an experiment in authoritarian government unmatched in our history even in wartime. Not only did the government assume powers over the lives of citizens that it had never previously claimed. In government, decision-making was concentrated in the hands of the prime minister, a man with notoriously poor judgment and little taste for detail. The cabinet was kept out of the loop until near the end. Discussion of fundamental issues was ruled out in the name of collective responsibility.

Sunak blames the government’s hysterical public messaging for aggravating the economic impact of the lockdown. Other countries did not stoke public fear in this irresponsible way. It has, he says, contributed to making the U.K.’s recovery the slowest in Europe. That is no doubt true. But there is a more serious criticism. Throughout history, fear has been the chief instrument of authoritarian rule. During the lockdown it was what enabled the government to silence dissent and inhibit discussion.

Worth reading in full.

Tags: AuthoritarianismBoris JohnsonLockdownLord Sumption

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50 Comments
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Hardliner
Hardliner
1 month ago

Is it still ‘Mother Earth’ these days, or have we moved on to another name?

Being very cynical as well as sceptical, i always start by following the money. For example, SEN = extra grants for schools; climate change = research money for unemployable academics. Where is the cash in the transgender debate (apart from a few sports winnings, which will be declining)? And how do I get my hands on some of it, apart from playing real tennis in a pink frock?

Last edited 1 month ago by Hardliner
9
0
Mogwai
Mogwai
1 month ago
Reply to  Hardliner

I’m amazed they still refer to ships as female, especially the embarressingly woketastic Royal Navy. Surely for any new ship they’d have to think of a unisex name and follow it with “God bless they/them and all who sail in they/them”.😐

9
0
soundofreason
soundofreason
1 month ago
Reply to  Mogwai

God???

4
0
Matt Dalby
Matt Dalby
1 month ago
Reply to  soundofreason

They’d probably say “all deities, tree spirits and extra terrestrial beings bless ze”.

3
0
Gezza England
Gezza England
1 month ago
Reply to  Matt Dalby

Insh Allah more likely.

3
0
FerdIII
FerdIII
1 month ago

Biological fact and real science – Ofcom ‘No’.

ClimateCon, Green Nazism, Green fraud & corruption, Green Communism – Ofcom ‘well of course, it is settled’

End Ofcom.
Make Thinking Great Again.

19
0
kev
kev
1 month ago
Reply to  FerdIII

Ofcom is not fit for purpose its subject to regulatory capture, staffed clearly by woke zealots, and probably always was!

Needs scrapping, and soon.

Its also effectively defying a Supreme Court judgement – another organisation that needs to be scrapped – that creature of Blair.

2
0
johnn635
johnn635
1 month ago
Reply to  FerdIII

OFCOM and science are poles apart. It is a politically driven body with a remit now for censorship and control.

0
0
DickieA
DickieA
1 month ago

It’s all quite straight forward…

BBC:
Jimmy Savile is a top DJ with an unblemished reputation
The vaccines are safe and effective
the world is boiling due to man’s C02 emmissions
Anybody slightly to the right of Jeremy Corbyn is an unhinged right wing bastard and should be locked up.

Ofcom – all of the above is tickety-boo and all executives in the BBC are purer than the driven snow.

GB News:
There are only 2 sexes as per the Supreme Court ruling.
There has been widespread sexual abuse of young girls by predominantly asian men
The primary driver of the climate is not man’s C02 emmissions.

Ofcom – if you continue to repeat such blatant and scurrilous untruths, we will fine you into oblivion.

Last edited 1 month ago by DickieA
20
0
For a fist full of roubles
For a fist full of roubles
1 month ago
Reply to  DickieA

So, GB News presenters should be metaphorically burned at the stake as heretics.
The era of the New Inquisition is here.
Hopefully it won’t be centuries until the New Age of Enlghtenment arrives.

7
0
Gezza England
Gezza England
1 month ago
Reply to  DickieA

They probably also believe Ukraine is just weeks from victory.

1
0
Boomer Bloke
Boomer Bloke
1 month ago

Off topic but relevant if we generalise lies told by the establishment and their bureaucratic machinery to the citizens of our once great but now third world country.
Paul Weston on the r@p€y gangs.
https://youtu.be/OvbbB4nZldE?si=i-bjLPasHcufM0g8

3
0
EppingBlogger
EppingBlogger
1 month ago

OfCom should not have an opinion about these matters. Its role is to supervise broadcasters, etc not to fix opinions or editorial policy.

or it should be.

13
0
Gezza England
Gezza England
1 month ago
Reply to  EppingBlogger

It was founded to manage the broadcast spectrum.

2
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 month ago
Reply to  Gezza England

One of the many things I find depressing and shocking is the number of people I speak to who just accept that we (well, it’s usually other people, in their minds) need to be nannied and protected from content that we should not be seeing.

3
0
RW
RW
1 month ago
Reply to  transmissionofflame

As this keeps being repeated, people will remember it when asked about the topic and will then produce the correpsonding lines from memory they honestly believe to be their own thoughts. That’s the basic idea behind any kind of marketing: Make it an ubiquitous background appearance to program it into people’s memory.

What I would find depressing were I to be depressed by something like this is that this is a universal phenomenon. Some people think that claims that woman is a biological category must not be made. Some other people think that expressing support for enemies of Israel must not be allowed. Both routinely claim they value freedom of speech. But only ever their own speech.

0
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 month ago
Reply to  RW

Indeed.

It’s good that you’re not depressed by things like this.

1
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 month ago
Reply to  EppingBlogger

It should be limited to regulating the spectrum and other technical matters. I don’t believe that broadcast content should be limited in any way by the state or any state-aligned quango. All radios, TVs, phones, laptops etc that I have ever seen have controls that allow the user to adjust the volume, channel or to switch it off. Anyone not living under a rock has a fair idea what they are likely to see on a given channel. Caveat emptor.

0
0
Hound of Heaven
Hound of Heaven
1 month ago

All seems a bit off to me.

2
0
Tonka Rigger
Tonka Rigger
1 month ago

🤣 Great, I say. Give them enough rope to hang themselves!

4
0
Tonka Fairy
Tonka Fairy
1 month ago
Reply to  Tonka Rigger

You sound like a far right conspiracy theorist!

4
0
WillP
WillP
1 month ago

On temperature: go to AI and ask it if an intensive property can be added. Answer No
Then ask it if it can be divided: Answer No.
Then ask it if temperature is an intensive property. Answer Yes.
Ergo there is no such thing as average temperature, Just some sort of statistic.
Think of it this way: if you add 2 kg to 3kg you get 5kg. If you add 20C to 30C you don’t get 50C. You’d get a median temperature based on the volumes and thermodynamic properties of what you were mixing.
And thermometers don’t measure such things. Eg: Try mixing a litre of water at 20C with 40 litres of air at 30C. Good luck!

You will get AI to admit such, but it segues, deflects and dissembles first, trying to avoid telling the truth. Like all climate activists.

2
0
Peter W
Peter W
1 month ago

Surely this not what Ofcom is supposed to be. They are now just a political, censorship bunch of opinionated pratts.

0
0
transmissionofflame
transmissionofflame
1 month ago
Reply to  Peter W

Broadcast content has been regulated by the state since Day 1.

Cameron apparently said Ofcom would have a strictly technical role under a Tory government – that didn’t happen. But he also said that their other roles would be taken directly under the control of the DCMS. So he didn’t really believe in freedom of speech – he just wanted to make sure it was him that directly controlled what speech was acceptable.

0
0

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