In my Spectator colum this week I’ve come to the defence of Isabel Oakeshott, the journalist who handed over Matt Hancock’s WhatsApp messages to the Telegraph. I’m astonished by how many of my journalist colleagues – particularly senior members of the profession – believe Isabel’s behaviour is the real story here, not the content of the messages.
I’m sure she anticipated that there would be a bit of griping, but not on this scale. She must have reasoned that any scrutiny of her behaviour – breaking her agreement with Hancock when he handed over the messages for her to ghostwrite his Pandemic Diaries – would be eclipsed by the real story, i.e. the authoritarianism and incompetence that characterised the government’s handling of the crisis. But no. Most senior journalists seem to be more outraged by her behaviour than by the revelations.
Partly, no doubt, this is because they feel guilty about not having done more at the time to challenge the coronavirus regulations, such as the mandatory mask-wearing in classrooms when schools were reopened in March 2021, even though we now know that the government was bounced into it by Nicola Sturgeon. Another example: in November 2020 Hancock got away with not reducing the self-isolation period from 14 days to five after someone was ‘pinged’, even though Chris Whitty said that would be fine, provided people tested themselves for five days. The reason, we discovered this week, was because Hancock feared it would ‘imply we’d been getting it wrong’.
As a rule, the questions asked of ministers and scientific advisers at the Downing Street press conferences focused on why the government wasn’t doing more to interfere with our freedom, not less. That was clearly a mistake – as these text messages make clear.
Another reason Isabel has been given such a hard time, I suspect, is because she’s not considered ‘one of us’ by the gatekeepers of the profession. Journalism is a hierarchical trade, with stringers, court reporters and freelancers at one end and editors and columnists at the other. Isabel is an interloper: she’s hugely successful but doesn’t play by the club rules and associates with people the Brahmin elite think of as beyond the pale, such as Arron Banks. She’s an outcast, but one who appears to be better at her job than they are, which is intolerable.
Her other sin is that she doesn’t have the ‘correct’ opinions. She’s pro-Brexit, anti-lockdown and concerned about state overreach. In journalism there is an intellectual orthodoxy when it comes to certain issues, and those who dissent from it are never fully accepted. This goes to the heart of why so many journalistic panjandrums were reluctant to challenge the government during the pandemic. The whole panoply of Covid restrictions – social distancing, the rule of six, masking – were uncritically embraced by the elite of every profession. To challenge them was to risk being seen as a ‘Covid denier’ – someone Hillary Clinton would call a ‘deplorable’. Lockdown sceptics are inclined to blame the machinery of state censorship, such as Ofcom, for the absence of dissent in the upper reaches of my profession, but the truth is that wasn’t necessary. The threat of being cast out from the inner circle was enough.
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For me the jury is out as to whether she is a hero or villain. One thing that goes against her though is that she pushed back on any accusation re the ‘midazolam murders’. I recall her saying that these were crazy conspiracy theories. And yet, the proof is out there. The authorities increased their orders for midazolam. Relatives of those that died have come forward to say their relatives were given morphine and midazolam. I am totally convinced that the ‘midazolam murders’ were not a conspiracy theory. As a journalist, neither should Isabel Oakeshott.
I would say not to make the perfect the enemy of the good. Given that most journalists have been despicable and useless during covid (and generally), I will take Oakeshott over almost any of them. She had the chance and she acted, probably against her best interest.
I’m glad she released these messages because it might just help in red-pilling some more of the hardcore Covidians but there’s obvious strategy involved here. I also think the timing is highly suspect. I wouldn’t trust her as far as I can throw her. I’ll take that last statement back if somebody can prove she was truly anti-restrictions all throughout the fiasco but for now, since I read this piece on her by Abi Roberts, then I’ll maintain my ironclad distrustful stance when it comes to MSM journos. They simply cannot turn back the clock or memory-hole what they did/didn’t do.
https://abiroberts.substack.com/p/the-truth-about-isabel-oakeshott
Now we know who pulls Richard Tice’s (Reform Party leader) strings!!!
You might also consider the damage she has done to the profession of journalism. What politician is ever going to trust a journalist with confidential information again?
Hopefully it’s the other way around.
What sort of journalist would ever trust a politician.
Confidential? Sorry, this was all government business which should have been discussed in minuted meetings, the minutes of which should be openly available. He was on our money when he sent these, supposedly serving us.
An excellent point tof.
Hear hear tof
Just a a question:
Do we know of any of these decisions were actually minuted and due process was followed?
Or was this governing through WhatsApp?
Good question. From what I can see, cabinet meetings are minuted but not published until 20 years after the event. The SAGE meetings were minuted and the minutes published, I believe.
As opposed to the damage done to the profession of journalism by almost every other journalist during covid – they were neither journalists nor were they professional.
This is a war, Hancock is one of the enemy and no opportunity should be spurned to discredit and defeat our enemy, for if we do not do so, they will surely defeat and destroy our well being and freedom.
The last several years have shown that most journalists can be entirely trusted to keep the lid on any confidential information that runs against the propaganda. And that position of trust makes journalism worse than useless to society.
Of course, certain journalists gain access to “confidential information” without being trusted stooges. Those they imprison without trial and charge under the US Espionage Act, if the”confidential” plans to assassinate them fail.
Personally, whilst to pretend falsely to having known the truth all along is despicable, I have no problem with a journalist who realises, on reading private correspondence, that they have been strung along by villains.
Your comment is hilarious. Journalism is no longer a profession, and as for politicians trusting journalists, nobody sane and intelligent trusts journalists these days, and certainly nobody trusts politicians.
So I don’t see the problem.
However having information about a crime and withholding it is being an accessory after the fact. And grace crimes have been committed.
There is a hierarchy of obligations, and helping to hide the blushes of evil monsters is not at the top.
I’m assuming this isn’t satire and is a good example of complete wrong-headedness. Politicians are there to serve the people. Journalists are there to hold those politicians accountable when they fail in their duty to serve the people. Both politicians and journalists conspired to coerce and lie to the public; they acted as one against the people. What we should be thinking about is not consequences for us, but how to impose consequences for them. Submissiveness is what got us here in the first place. It must not be repeated. Ever.
Who cares? What politician should ever be trusted with anything ever again? They were trying to kill us, and they already succeeded with some. And if they get their way in Ukraine, as per Ben Wallace, the Ellwood spook, NATO and the Biden Administration they’ll kill a whole lot more. And the remainder will be left fighting hand to hand with Gary Lineker and the r@p€ jihadists that they are importing from multiple s#1t#0£€$ and housing in hotels near you at our expense.
I am a bit taken aback by the responses below which mostly seem to miss the point. Hancock may have behaved excruciatingly, Oakeshott may have behaved correctly (on balance), politicians may be totally untrustworthy, all I am doing is providing another reason why she has been given such a hard time by other journalists. She has made their life that bit more difficult.
“She has made their life that bit more difficult.”
Good. As it should be. The majority have done Rock all for three years and Ms Oakshott has shown them up.
Then I’m afraid you don’t understand the problem chap. And nothing could be said that could get you to.
“all I am doing is providing another reason why she has been given such a hard time by other journalists”
I suppose it’s possible that some of them think that, but it seems like a stretch to me. We don’t know the detail of their agreement, but these are not private messages, they are public business for which we were paying him, in a supposed terrible crisis. How he expected them to remain hidden is beyond me given her known views on lockdowns, and it should be absolutely standard operating procedure to disclose a scoop like this. Occam’s Razor suggests to me they are pissed off because she’s made them look bad as journalists and because they all supported lockdowns so they also look like the chumps they are.
Hancock did not “behave excruciatingly”. Excruciating is when someone is terribly rude at a dinner party. What he did was disgraceful, despicable, reckless, possibly criminal and arguably evil.
Then “egregiously” is perhaps a better term?
But excruciating isn’t simply ‘rudeness at a dinner party’. It has dark roots.
“to torture, torment, inflict very severe pain on,” as if by crucifying, 1560s, from Latin excruciatus” https://www.etymonline.com/word/excruciate
adjective
Rules (be they society’s convention, legally enforceable or other) are there to be broken. I for one do not get up every morning and consult the rule book before I breathe.
” I’m astonished by how many of my journalist colleagues – particularly senior members of the profession – believe Isabel’s behaviour is the real story here, not the content of the messages.”
I’m astonished that you’re astonished – they were all cheerleading the covid folly and evil – they are in it up to their necks!
Sarcasm, surely….
Doesn’t read that way to me.
I’m trying to give him the benefit of considerable doubt…
Oddly for someone in his line of work and with the experiences he must have had, he seems to assume the best of people.
He’s a still a fence sitter – he isn’t Team James yet.
It is characteristic of the culturally dominant cult-du-jour that solidarity trumps truth every time. “My country right or wrong” looks positively reflexive in comparison.
…to which I must add that my own profession of medicine has shown exactly the same character, equally notably amongst it leading lights. Which ought to lead us to stop viewing people by their profession to gauge our expectation, but by what religious ideology they follow.
Never forget Andrew Neil demanding that the unjabbed be locked up.
And Piers Morgan saying that the unjabbed should be denied medical treatment.
Indeed. As the incomparable Neil Oliver puts it here:
Neil Oliver on Twitter: “We have all the receipts. We know who said what, and when.” / Twitter
“I’m astonished by how many of my journalist colleagues – particularly senior members of the profession – believe Isabel’s behaviour is the real story…”
Why surprised Toby? Journalists within the MSM have by and large invalidated their right to be called journalists. The complete failure of a whole cohort has undermined a significant section of British society and to everyones loss. At least there are positives in that alternative media has flourished and for those of us with sufficient desire for truth these outlets are accessible.
The realty is that your journalist associates have been a monumental failure and what Isabel Oakshott has done is shine a super trouper on to their blatant and indeed egregious failings.
The Cathy Newman interview on Talk TV absolutely epitomised the anger and petty jealousy of a failed industry – never mind the story how much did you get paid Isabel?
Not content with failing to do their job in holding the establishment to account the journos now seek to ostracise and pillory someone for doing what they should have been doing these last three years and all for forty pieces of silver.
The release of the WhatsApp messages is significant not necessarily for what they disclose but for the everlasting reminder and embarrassment this will leave on those still working in the business and for that ‘thank you’ Ms Oakshott.
Thank you too Toby for publicly pronouncing your support, doubtless their will be blow back.
I would not want to piss Isabel off though.
No, I saw her once on Question Time. My impression was that she was razor sharp and had ice in her veins.
Exactly. Or, as the Norwegians say, du og jeg har is i magen
Isabel’s got nerve, that’s for sure. What she’s done to Hancock will follow her for the rest of her career. It’s a one-time thing: once she betrayed a trust the way she did to the idiot monster Hancock, she’s not going to be able to get that level of access ever again. Politicians and major businessmen won’t go near her. Many people will never trust her. So she had to take a calculated risk with the scoop of her career that could yet end her career.
It will change her career, for sure.
Lord knows, we all have stories to tell. She does now.
She’s got more balls than the rest of the pathetic MSM “journalists” put together …. and “our” pathetic MPs.
I think she’ll do just fine.
There is no question that a great many of the mainstream journalists who have become so accepting of the status quo and the establishment point of view need to have their hides nailed to the wall.
From my point of view, I no longer pay much I see in any mainstream publication more than a brief interest before realising that it’s not telling me anything that TPTB don’t want me to believe.
An interesting perspective from a BBC journalist…but do we believe them? I’m now so distrustful of these people, due to their abject failings in their professional duty and therefore failing the public on a massively damaging scale, I feel they all need to be held personally accountable for the harms they’ve caused. These people and the medical profession I will never forgive. Both industries literally have blood on their hands. The journos took care of the mental/PsyOp part and the doctors/nurses took care of the actual killing, both directly and indirectly.
”As I tried to make sense of this bleak new world, I sought out those who were on the same page as me: people who believed in liberty, privacy and medical autonomy; people who had read history and learned freedoms easily surrendered are often hard to win back; people who were worried about the precedents being set by legislation allowing the Government to monitor and curtail almost every aspect of our lives. I found myself seeking out different voices in the media, reading periodicals I would have previously dismissed as right-wing rubbish. I even wrote to a Tory Brexit hardliner MP, praising him for his vocal campaigning against his party’s illiberal approach to the pandemic. As I read his polite reply to my glowing missive with delight, I realised I had a full-blown case of Covid Estrangement Syndrome.”
https://thecritic.co.uk/covid-estrangement-syndrome/
Charlie’s experience of CES is probably typical of BBC journalists at the beginning, but is probably not a “lived experience” of those who were sceptical from the outset. This latter group, who people who actually believed in liberty, privacy and medical autonomy and tried to live out those values, were routinely denigrated or mis-reported by the BBC, who acted throughout as thought they were the propaganda division of the Cabinet Office.
“Most senior journalists seem to be more outraged by her behaviour than by the revelations.” Perhaps because to them the revelations weren’t revelations. Anyone with at least half a functioning brain, which I suppose includes journalists and senior journalists could have seen that the people chanting the mantra ‘follow the science’ weren’t actually following the science.
There are no heroes and villains in this blood-soaked mess; merely people struggling through it. Isabel Oakeshott, whether you love her or loathe her, has done the right thing. Does it matter that she doesn’t agree with every other talking point lockdown sceptics have? Ideological purity is not the thing we’re looking for. If ever there was a drive for ideological purity, COVID-19 represented it. The Oakeshott revelations have opened the door a crack to show the pure evil of the government and state that runs us… and the utter contempt they have for the people who elect them!
Trouble is, most people are apathetic. They don’t know anything about the constitution from school, because we have to go out of the way to learn about it, and generally just bimble along and do as they’re told. I never realised just how neutered the public were. I remember my shock the first weekend as things were locking down when I ran into some family friends and they were keeping two metres away from me. I always assumed everyone would ignore the lockdown and carry on as normal, especially as it was only for three weeks. More fool me. It’s why I now hate the UK, but love The Land.
The Land… I have found my inner Native American Indian throughout this sad, horrible, bitter, twisted, corrupt, murderous affair. We travelled all over Europe – essentially unrestricted – during ThePandemic™ , and never have I felt closer to The Land…
I have nothing but contempt for most of the sheeple whose ignorance, cowardice and apathy allowed the Establishment to do this to us.
I still have a few old friends who swallowed the propaganda whole and dutifully followed every moronic “rule” imposed on them. But I only maintain those friendships by refusing to discuss the subject with them … and the opportunity to say “I told you so.”
It’s way past time for retrospective critical analysis of this diabolical manufactured debacle…
Consider for example my email to Vallance and Whitty in July 2021 titled: Reckless and grossly irresponsible response to covid-19 – the UK in the thick of it
For the attention of:
Sir Patrick Vallance, UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser Professor Chris Whitty, UK Chief Medical Adviser
Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Whitty
It emerged in early 2020 that elderly people with comorbidities were at risk with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Independent and objective specialists in infectious diseases should have focussed on developing preventatives and treatments for the vulnerable, including easy and inexpensive promising preventatives such as vitamin D for those with a deficiency.
Instead, people associated with the pharmaceutical industry oversaw billions of pounds being poured into researching vaccine candidates, and PCR testing, and contact tracing, while sick people died from lack of treatment and neglect.
Now billions of people around the world not at risk of covid-19 are being coerced to sacrifice their own natural immune response to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and submit to lucrative ‘leaky vaccines’ that don’t prevent infection or transmission – to purportedly protect against a disease which doesn’t pose a serious risk for most people.
What lies ahead for these vaccinated people…who aren’t actually immunised, and who may now be pressed to have a lifetime of covid injections, against a virus most could have dealt with naturally.
How did this happen?!
What sort of independent and objective review and approval processes did the covid-19 response go through?
None by the looks of things!
What does the future hold now, after a variety of experimental covid-19 injections have been rushed to market, and pressed upon people of all ages and health status, already over 2 billion, and with more repeat ‘boosters’ in the pipeline? We have no idea of the long-term consequences of this unprecedented global mass ‘vaccination’ rollout, what will this unnatural intervention set in play? This is a massive experiment, being undertaken without ‘informed consent’.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus is the excuse that has been used for a ‘build back better’ agenda to implement a universal vaccine, to be given repeatedly throughout life, along with other controls on the people.
More people need to see through the obfuscation and the fear-mongering, to see what a massive scam has been pulled on the entire world, wreaking economic and social havoc.
Billions and billions of pounds of the people’s money has been wasted on ‘leaky vaccines’, useless testing, and dystopian electronic surveillance – the people’s wealth transferred to the coffers of a few. This is theft on a colossal scale.
But even worse is the theft of people’s liberty and autonomy, with the Boris Johnson Government and SAGE’s determination to terrorise the people about covid-19, and make them submit to medical tyranny.
Sir Patrick Vallance and Professor Whitty, this is shaping up to be the biggest scandal of all time, and the UK is right in the thick of it, with the reckless and grossly irresponsible global response to covid-19.
See my previous email to you: The reaction to SARS-CoV-2 virus is the most reckless and grossly irresponsible ‘public health’ response in history. 6 April 2021
Sincerely
Elizabeth Hart
Independent person investigating the over-use of vaccine products and conflicts of interest in vaccination policy
*Edited bolding
Wow Toby I am shocked that you have been sucked in by this nonsense, the MSM who throughout the pandemic were puppets of the government and pumping out ridiculous propaganda, and soon as they bring out this rubbish after 3 years of lying you believe it, it’s like being handed a golden goose, everyone is completely blinded by the revelations instead of thinking why are they doing this and what is going on while they create this circus?
IO is not to be congratulated for acting now when it’s relatively safe to come out of the closet! Did she ever speak out against vaccines or, for that matter, lockdowns at the time? Much too easy to release all this now (when she and the Telegraph are being ‘allowed’ to do so). This whole release of texts is a total pantomime, a joke. Who were those pulling the strings? Who were the controllers? Don’t give me the cock-up theory one more time, please.
Excellent. Next name names, the names of the media panjandrums and print their comms and their orders, eg the editors of the DT and the Times, say, and their attitude to censorship, Gates, the Global Health Security blahblah, government ad revenue, OFCOM, their Lockdown parties, their Lockdown lovers, etc, etc,
That’s easy for me to say and hard for you to do, but where are the whistleblowers of journalism in journalism, anonymous or otherwise?
Oakeshott has done a greater service to the British people than the entire “news” stables of the BBC, ITV, Sky, C4, The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Independent, The Mirror, The Express, The Sun ……. and The Daily Telegraph, with the exception of Allison Pearson and Liam Halligan (who at least tried to challenge the propaganda).
By rights, she should get an MBE.
It was highly illuminating that NOT ONE question from “our” MPs at PMQs was about the Covid Restrictions and the WattsApp revelations.
“Partly, no doubt, this is because they feel guilty”. No Toby, it’s because they were totally guilty then and thought they’d got away with it. Now they’re pi55ed off because they were taken for fools and and now their crass stupidity is being shown up in public
What makes me extremely suspicious about this whole revelatory fiasco is the fact that Oakeshotte’s publication of the “Lockdown Files” has been so readily and briskly snapped up by all the British mainstream publications. By contrast, PartyGate and the Wuhan lab-leak theory took an awfully long time to even get published, let alone accepted by the mainstream media as even a possibility! Clearly, not all scandals were created equal.
But I suppose we’re looking at a refreshing revival of the written record chronicling the Machiavellian undertakings of government (the latter in this case being carried out via undercover social media exchanges).
Can we rely on such maverick journalists to carry out a “mass-vaccination-files”? Or is that just too far outside of the Overton window?