Although I couldn’t resist the headline, I have no intention of adding to the many hit pieces on Andrew Bridgen.
But nor can I completely condone his recent tweet.
Prior to the events of this week, Bridgen had been brave to raise the extremely important issue of vaccine harms in Parliament.
One always assumes politicians are behaving in a largely calculated manner most of the time. But Bridgen’s recent speech on the matter was so brave and borderline reckless that one wonders if he has simply always been acting solely according to his conscience, and this is just the first time it happens to have landed him in this much trouble.
Or, as I suggested in another piece, maybe he has recently taken a hefty dose of red pills. All the signs are there: awareness of vaccine damages, appearing on James Delingpole’s podcast… actually that’s all you need.
Unfortunately the same instinct, whether naivety or righteous zeal, caused him to post his regrettable tweet.
Now let’s be clear: in no way was the tweet anti-Semitic. I have this on good authority from my most anti-Semitism-aware friend, who even believes the term ‘Globalism‘ is anti-Semitic, yet conceded Bridgen’s tweet was not. Crass, perhaps. Racist, no.
Nor was Bridgen intending to trivialise the Holocaust. He employed it as an analogy precisely because of its horrific properties. And by calling the global vaccine side-effects scandal the “biggest crime against humanity since the Holocaust” (or, at least, endorsing a cardiologist who made this point) he is seemingly presenting the vaccines as the next worst event.
Still, the details almost don’t matter, because he has already lost.
And by making the ill-advised analogy, my fear is he has ended up undermining the serious cause he was rightly highlighting.
He has given the Guardian the ammunition to bizarrely link him to Andrew Tate, and call for more online censorship off the back of it, and allowed Rishi Sunak, and that ludicrous popinjay Matt Hancock to call him anti-Semitic.
This allows them to crush Covid dissent, bin Bridgen, and move on.
It could be compared to Enoch Powell’s famous “Rivers of Blood” speech, in that it raised a very serious issue that concerns huge numbers of people, but did it in a sufficiently lurid way as to set the argument back catastrophically.
Just as the debate on immigration was buried to the detriment of the country, will the legitimate issue of vaccine harms now be similarly silenced?
It certainly looks that way in the short term, and it reminds us all of the discipline needed when one is on the despised (yet correct) fringe of accepted opinion. Dissident discipline, one might call it.
Lacking this vigilance, Bridgen handed his party the perfect excuse to dump him.
Chief Whip Simon Hart’s statement clearly reflects that. His claim that “Andrew Bridgen has crossed a line, causing great offence in the process”, suggests that the Party’s main concern was raising the issue of vaccine safety, with the Holocaust reference being an offensive aside. The next part confirms this reading:
As a nation we should be very proud of what has been achieved through the vaccine programme. The vaccine is the best defence against Covid that we have. Misinformation about the vaccine causes harm and costs lives. I am therefore removing the whip from Andrew Bridgen with immediate effect, pending a formal investigation.
The idea we should be proud of the vaccine programme is simply an opinion, albeit one that appears to be rigorously enforced. I personally remain impressed by the logistics of the rollout, which could not have been achieved within the EU, but would not go anywhere near the actual product.
Hart goes on to discredit himself with standard Regime terms like ‘misinformation’, and the contemporary authoritarian’s favourite claim: that exposing potential wrongdoing is causing ‘harm’.
I believe Bridgen will be proved right on vaccines in the long term, but his reputation may sadly remain tarnished by the clumsy comparison he made.
In future, let’s maintain our dissident discipline, and not give our glib oppressors any open goals.
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I think you mean the true case fatality rate will go LOWER. That would be the case as the true number of infections is determined.
BBC radio More or Less last night (20/5) https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j949 had a very good piece on the risks around schools re-opening. (ie there are none!!)
I think more notice should be taken of this programme.. especially by the rest of the BBC. It is the only programme that actually looks into facts with any accuracy and without the usual BBC bias and prejudice. In fact a bit of an outlier.. Surprised that the management let them get away with it.
also last night’s programme had interesting piece about the german covid figures.
The behaviour of teachers in the COVID-19 crisis is actually very easy to understand, even if it’s infuriating to see the consequences. Most teachers exist in an environment where they are permanently terrified of being accused by anyone higher up the chain, or a parent, of falling short in any one of a myriad different ways. This includes anything to do with a student’s welfare or safety even where the allegations are ridiculous or even invented. Every trip, every activity is preceded by laborious risk assessment processes, and mountains of paperwork. However exemplary a teacher’s career record it can be destroyed in a few minutes by a single malicious or a mischievous allegation, or a genuine but innocent mistake however minor. I know of one instance where a teacher with an outstanding record stretching over decades inadvertently uploaded to the school website some confidential information. He realised his mistake almost instantly and removed the material straightaway. Nonetheless the school management, anxious to reduce its complement of expensive older teachers gave him the choice of resigning or facing a disciplinary investigation on the grounds that he had compromised safeguarding. He left teaching.
School hierarchies are byzantine too. I did work in one for nine years, and my wife taught for 35 years, so I know about all this from firsthand.
This has created a culture where initiative is stifled and where taking responsibility for anything is something not only many teachers try to avoid, but are also even told to by unions. As I recall unions discouraged anything to do with school trips on the basis that teachers were expected to take excessive responsibility. Of course many teachers do resist and go ahead but they still fall over themselves to cover their backs.
The net effect is that confronted with this crisis a lot of teachers are literally paralyzed with fear – not necessarily of the virus (which is how it’s being expressed) – but of being accused of anything. They already were paranoid. These primary schools packed with taped off areas and showcase COVID arrangements are just that: they’re there primarily to showcase the headteacher and teachers as being beyond reproach. The whole thing is designed to deflect allegations and accusations and just reflects an elaboration of what schools are like now anyway. In that sense it’s part of a culture of competitive virtue-signalling but now it’s taking schools into an environment where they will literally be unable to fulfil their remit by trying to operate these new zero-risk set-ups.
Such an accurate assessment!
The first comment I received from the staff at our pre-school was “What’s going to happen to us if a child gets sick? We are going to be blamed.”
Christine Brett’s article is reassuring and inspires confidence.