We live in an age that is gesturing towards global government. This is not a conspiracy theory; it is something which perfectly respectable politicians, academics, policymakers and UN officials routinely talk about. What is crystallising is not exactly a single world Government, but rather a complicated mixture of aligned institutions, organisations, networks, systems and fora which has sometimes been given the fancy name of a ‘bricolage’ by international relations theorists. There is no centre, but rather a vast and nebulous conglomeration.
This does not mean, though, that global government (or ‘global governance’, as it is more commonly known) is emerging organically. It is being purposively directed. Again, this is no conspiracy theory; it is something that the people involved openly discuss – they hide their plans in perfectly plain sight. And this has been going on for a long time. In the early 1990s, when the Cold War had drawn to a close, the UN convened something called the Commission on Global Governance, which released a final report – called ‘Our Global Neighbourhood‘ – in 1995. It makes for fascinating reading as a kind of ‘playbook’ for what has followed in the field in the 30 years since – establishing as it does a clear rhetorical and argumentative pattern in favour of the global governance project that is repeated to this day.
The basic idea is as follows. In the olden days, when “faith in the ability of Governments to protect citizens and improve their lives was strong”, it was fine for the nation-state to be ‘dominant’. But now the world economy is integrated, the global capital market has vastly expanded, there has been extraordinary industrial and agricultural growth and there has been a huge population explosion. Ours is therefore a “more crowded, interdependent world with finite resources”. And this means we need “a new vision for humanity” which will “galvanise people everywhere to achieve higher levels of cooperation in areas of common concern and shared destiny” (these “areas of common concern” being “human rights, equity, democracy, meeting basic material needs, environmental protection, and demilitarisation”). We need, in short, “an agreed global framework for actions and policies to be carried out at appropriate levels” and a “multifaceted strategy for global governance”.
This is not difficult reasoning to parse. The central argument can be summarised as follows: global governance is necessary because the world is globalising, and that brings with it global problems that need solving collectively. And the logic must be impeccable in the minds of those who are engaged in the global governance project, because what they say has remained essentially the same ever since. Hence, if we fast forward from 1995 to 2024, we find world leaders finalising a revised draft of UN Secretary-General António Guterres’s proposed ‘Pact for the Future’, a memorandum of guiding principles for global governance which will be the culmination of his ‘Our Common Agenda‘ project, launched in 2021. While there is a bit more meat on the bone in this document than there may have been in Our Global Neighbourhood in terms of policy, we see a more-or-less identical argument playing out.
So, once again, we are reminded in this document that we live in “a time of profound global transformation” in which we face challenges that are “deeply interconnected” and “far exceed the capacity of any single state alone”. Since our problems can “only be addressed collectively” we therefore need “strong and sustained international cooperation guided by trust and solidarity” – stop me if you think you’ve heard this one before. Even the substantive concerns at the heart of the ‘Pact for the Future’ are largely unchanged from those cited in ‘Our Global Neighbourhood’: human rights, equity, poverty and sustainable development, the environment, peace and security – the familiar litany. The only thing that has really changed is that in 2024 there has been layered on top a tone of alarmism: “we are confronted by a growing range of catastrophic and existential risks”, the reader is told, “and if we do not change course, we risk tipping irreversibly into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown”. Better get the washing in, then.
To return to my summary from earlier on, the picture being painted by ‘Our Common Agenda’ and the ‘Pact for the Future’ is then just a slightly more elaborate copy of what was sketched out in ‘Our Global Neighbourhood’: globalisation causes certain problems to emerge that have to be governed globally, and therefore we need, so to speak, to be globally governed. And this is presented as a fait accompli; it is indeed “common sense”, as the Secretary-General calls it in ‘Our Common Agenda’. Governing globally is necessary because there are global problems, and that is that – how could one imagine things could be otherwise?
This all brings to mind Michel Foucault’s account of the emergence of the state in early modernity. Foucault describes that emergence as being, in essence, an epistemological or metaphysical phenomenon rather than a political or social one. For the medieval mind, the world’s significance was spiritual – it was a staging post before Rapture, and what mattered was salvation. The world was therefore not so much an empirical phenomenon as a theological one – it was governed not by physics but by “signs, prodigies, marvels and monstrosities that were so many threats of chastisement, promises of salvation, or marks of election”. It was not something to be altered, but was rather a “system of obedience” to God’s will.
However, beginning in the early modern period, there began a great epistemological rupture: it became possible to understand the world as having an existence independent of God, and being organised therefore by what we would nowadays call science. Now, all of a sudden (though obviously the story played out over many generations) the world became something that had temporal rather than spiritual significance, and the people in it began to be seen as not merely souls awaiting the Second Coming, but populations whose material and moral conditions could be improved by action in the world itself. And this meant that people began to imagine that a ruler’s duty was not just to be a sovereign but to ‘govern’ in the sense of making things better in this life rather than the next.
The state as we understand it today, according to Foucault, emerged within these reflections – the apparatus of armies, taxation, courts and so on all existed before this period, but it was only once government was imagined as having the role of governing that it became possible to think about and speak of the state as such; it was only then that it became a “reflective practice”. It thus became:
An object of knowledge (connaissance) and analysis… part of a reflected and concerted strategy, and… began to be called for, desired, coveted, feared, rejected, loved and hated.
The point that Foucault was keen to emphasise, though, was that while states undoubtedly existed and governed, the state was just an “episode” in government and would – the implication obviously follows – some day be superseded. To repeat: the epistemic break ushered in by early modernity, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and so on transformed the world into an empirical phenomenon, not just particular chunks of territory, and it therefore contained within it the seed of a concept of global or world government: a future in which all of ‘creation’, so to speak, could be brought under the same shared project of material and moral improvement.
Government, then, is not something which the State does per se, but rather something which at a particular period of time simply happened to utilise the state as its instrument. Government is in essence an epistemic phenomenon – it is that activity which conceives of the world as its field of action, as something to be known, understood, studied, manipulated and improved, in the absence or irrelevance of God. At one stage its ambition was limited territorially, chiefly because of technological constraint, but there is no inherent reason for that limit, and as technology has improved such that the globe can now be relatively easily traversed physically and communicatively, so that limitation has disappeared and government is free to imagine its project as genuinely global.
That goes a long way to explaining the first part of the conceptual dynamic that plays out in respect of the global governance project: government can now imagine the world, in a very literal sense, to be something that human reason can know and act upon, and thereby improve. As the preamble to the ‘Pact for the Future’ has it, “advances in knowledge, science, technology and innovation, if properly and equitably managed, could deliver a breakthrough to a better and more sustainable future for all… a world that is safe, sustainable, peaceful, inclusive, just, equal, orderly and resilient”. To repeat: governing is that activity which conceives of the world as its field of action, as something to be known, understood, studied, manipulated and improved, in the absence or irrelevance of God.
To understand the second part of the conceptual dynamic underlying global governance – the fact that that there are global problems that make it absolutely necessary for global governance to exist, and act – we only need to carefully read Machiavelli. Foucault puts Machiavelli at the centre of the story he tells in regard to government and the state, because Machiavelli brings the medieval or pre-modern way of thinking to a resounding end; he asks no theological questions but treats ruling as something that is done only in the name of temporal concerns. He is not interested in the next life; he is interested in this one.
And in particular he is interested in providing advice to a ruler who is taking charge of something new, or afresh – not a ruler who is established but one who has founded, usurped or conquered his throne. Hence, at the very beginning of The Prince, Machiavelli tells us – these are more or less the first words out of his mouth, as it were:
I say, then, that in hereditary states accustomed to the rule of their Prince’s family, there are far fewer difficulties in maintaining them than in new states, for it is sufficient simply not to break ancient customs, and then to suit one’s actions to unexpected events. In this way, if such a Prince is of ordinary ability he will always maintain his state… It is [only] in the new principality that difficulties arise.
So Machiavelli was not interested in providing advice to rulers who were simply maintaining the status quo; his advice was going to be provided to those who set out to rule a new principality. And here the advice is absolutely clear – the new ruler, one who does not inherit his position but somehow comes to occupy it, needs to justify his position somehow; he needs a reason why he should be in charge in the first place, and why he should remain in place. Hence, very simply and straightforwardly:
A wise ruler [in such a position] must think of a method by which his citizens will need the state and himself at all times and in every circumstance. Then they will always be loyal to him.
Governing in modernity, then – in which ‘princes’ will no longer be able to simply point to hereditary or religious justifications for their existence, and are therefore always new in the Machiavellian sense – requires what I once called a “discourse of vulnerability“. It is imperative that it presents its own existence as indeed imperative, so that can maintain its status. It always needs to be making the citizens loyal, through having an account of itself as necessary. And this means discursively constructing the vulnerable population as always in need of government for succour.
You will no doubt have joined the dots already. Since the state is a mere ‘episode’ of government, and since government will necessarily expand its ambition to the entire globe, the same logic underpinning Machiavelli’s discourse of vulnerability in the context of the modern state will also of course hold true in the global arena. It will in short be necessary for global governance to insist precisely on its own necessity at every turn: since we face all sorts of problems that are “deeply interconnected” and “far exceed the capacity of any single state alone”, and since especially we “risk tipping irreversibly into a future of persistent crisis and breakdown” if these problems are not solved, then a global governance framework simply has to come into existence and govern the globe on our behalf. And thus it retains our loyalty and legitimates itself. This is what it governs for: to present government as necessary – globally.
Now that we understand the nature of this discourse, then, we are in a position to subject it to critique. And we can do this across three axes.
First, we can ask: are the problems identified in global governance circles actually not in the capacity of any single state alone to manage on its own behalf? Or might it be the case that individual states, responsible to their electorates and engaged in the national interest, are better placed to deal with crises that arise than nebulous, unaccountable and opaque networks of global governance actors?
I have on my bookshelf here a collection titled Legitimacy in Global Governance: Sources, Processes and Consequences, edited by Jonas Tallberg and put out by the University of Lund in 2018; its opening paragraph – absolutely standard in academic work of this kind – lists “climate change, internet communications, disease epidemics, financial markets, cultural heritage, military security, trade flows and human rights” as sources of global problems, and includes “uncoordinated climate policies, a fragmented internet, perennial financial crises, transcultural misunderstanding, arms proliferation, trade protectionism and human rights abuses” as the likely results of failing to set up appropriate institutions of global governance accordingly. Well, we might very well ask – are “trade flows” a “global challenge” requiring global coordination through the WTO, or something that individual elected governments should determine for themselves, acting perhaps through bilateral agreements? Is “transcultural misunderstanding” something that we really need global governance to manage on our behalf? Is “military security” not quintessentially a task which sovereign nation states pursue on behalf of their populations?
Second, we can ask: is it true that the problems which purportedly necessitate global governance would lead to “permanent crisis and breakdown” without it? Or is it perhaps more plausible to say that an interconnected world (and it is doubtlessly true that the world is more interconnected than it has ever been in human history) is simply going to be characterised by insoluble problems that are best dealt with as contingencies by individual states? For example, is the likelihood of pandemic disease something that global governance needs to exist in order to control, or is it just a fact of life in the modern era which is best responded to through the plans of state governments based on their particular needs and resources, on an ad hoc basis?
And third – and most importantly – we can ask: is global governance in itself a risk, or a factor which exacerbates existing risks rather than ameliorates them? On the one hand, there is no doubt that global governance, which has a tendency to crystallise groupthink among a relatively thin sliver of globalised political, academic, third sector and business circles, can lead to the worldwide, or near-worldwide, imposition of very foolish public policy. The Covid lockdowns are of course the paradigmatic example of this. To this extent global governance is inherently fragilising: it puts all of the policy eggs in one basket, and thus massively amplifies the threat of breakage.
But on the other hand, the very project of global government brings with it particular, unique risks which global governance enthusiasts naturally tend to overlook. In a recent interview with the Triggernometry podcast, Peter Thiel makes something like this point, in his observation that the biggest risk of all which humanity faces is probably a totalitarian world government which, precisely because it covers the whole world, cannot be escaped. This is the real threat posed by government as such (remembering that it is the state which is the tool of government and not vice versa), and, in representing the extinction of human freedom, it would be far more damaging than any individual pathogen, trade war, environmental disaster or financial crisis.
The question which we really need to ask, in other words, is not whether there are risks that come into existence as a result of the world becoming more interconnected, but rather what those risks really are. And sensible people would come to the conclusion that they are in fact political rather than genuinely ‘existential’ – they come not from the realm of the exogenous but rather emerge from the very project of managing existential risk through global governance itself. To put things very bluntly, a future of “permanent crisis and breakdown” is much more likely to emerge from authoritarian attempts to stave off such a future than the emergence of particular events (pandemics, financial crises, environmental disaster, etc.) in themselves. Our problem, in other words, is government – understood, at the risk of repeating myself, as that activity which conceives of the world as its field of action, as something to be known, understood, studied, manipulated and improved, in the absence or irrelevance of God – and that is precisely a problem that global governance is uniquely incapable of solving.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. You can subscribe to his Substack – News From Uncibal – here.
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It’s probably better it was in written form as in person he would have been talked over and belittled by the KC’s to achieve their goal of a whitewash and the belief that the UK should have had lockdown sooner and a range of other draconian measures instead of the more sensible targeted approach like the Great Barrington Declaration.
No doubt though that the Good Lady will take full note of all matters raised and adjudicate accordingly…..
Ha. Ha. Ha…
Ha.
Aren’t you supposed to add (sarcasm)!
“I am not interested in contributions.”
Would probably be clueless Keith’s response to Tegnell’s last point.
The whole enquiry is dripping with bien pensant, leftist arrogance. Shut it down and start again with a balanced panel of judges.
I don’t think we really want “judges”, do we? I think the public should judge. What we want is adversarial advocates who are batting for different teams, different points of view, able to call witnesses to testify under oath, treat them as hostile, subpoena evidence and largely set their own agenda – that might produce something worth paying attention to. The US Senate manages something similar.
There are technocrats and technocrats. Though to be more precise, there are technocrats, and people like Tegnell who are content to give expert advice.
Sits perfectly well with me. Leave the people to decide and the people would have come to the same conclusion i.e. any natural threat will be handled in accordance with the level that threat naturally poses. A technocrat is simply the mouthpiece of one group. Tegnell spoke for the people. Bypass Tegnell and we’re back to the people.
Sweden relied on a concept that seems to have disappeared here – personal responsibility. Our government no longer believes we can act responsibly without their direction. Well that may be some for some, but to impose that on all of us was appalling.
DO watch the YouTube videos of the WHO takeover debate in the House, with Andrew Bridgen, and one by John Campbell.
They are DAMNING. Bridgen nails what the WHO are up to. And if they get their way, mass non-compliance must be the order of the day.
Campbell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkhjH2ySMUw&pp=ygUSd2hvIHRyZWF0eSBkZWJhdGUg
Can’t find the other at the moment…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9rRbVycNQk
In other words, the real reason Sweden resisted the global rush to lockdowns in 2020 was that its technocrats (such as Tegnell) were all-powerful. … It’s a paradox that will not sit well with many anti-lockdown campaigners who see the evil technocracy as the problem, and want to sweep away the ‘blob’.
Not really. Technocrat or politician, theirs were a bit more honest and followed evidence, ours not at all. The decisions to be made should always have been taken by politicians who are accountable and consider the trade offs. Just that politicians everywhere cocked up in the same way at the same time.
“Just that politicians everywhere cocked up in the same way at the same time.”
You don’t believe that tof.
‘There was no pandemic.’ And so no cock-ups.
Indeed I do not believe that. I am not sure exactly what did happen and why, but I cannot believe that they all honestly thought that they were saving granny.
People continue to characterise Sweden’s approach as no lockdown. This lets our opponents assume a massive free-for-all of recklessness.
The key distinction is that Sweden had no state-mandated lockdown. They treated their citizens like adults. Almost everyone dialed back their mingling, but people got on with their lives.
Some people wanted to isolate, the rest were respectful of this. There was no curtain twitching, no grassing on your neighbours, no calling people covidiots, no school closures, etc.
True though public gatherings with more than 50 (I think) people were banned and I think 16-18 year groups at school were sent home for a while
But certainly when we went in October 2020 the atmosphere felt normal albeit Stockholm was pretty quiet due to people working from home and not many tourists
The Google earth data is pretty clear. Normal life persisted in Sweden, in total contrast to the rest of western Europe. This idea of a voluntary lock down is bs, ppl at risk and cautious probably mingled less but that’s about it. Ppl who could worked at home more often. Ppl met in homes, restaurants and bars stayed open as did schools. Ppl continued to go to the gym. I’d say the ban on mass gathering was still completely OTT but I don’t believe in any such restrictions under any circumstances. I think ppl have totally forgotten how bonkers it all was, particularly recall the council putting scaffolding around a childs slide.
That’s what I meant. Common sense was allowed to prevail. Trust your population rather than smother them in nonsense rules.
Well they either characterise it as being recklessly no-lockdown, or they say it did lock down really because there were a few rules, or they say that either way it didn’t need a lockdown because Swedes are such great people and no one lives within ten miles of another human being anyway (not sure why Ferguson’s model didn’t take that into account, and still predicted apocalypse if it didn’t lock down, but never mind).
And some fell on stony ground. …
‘….the real reason Sweden resisted the global rush to lockdowns in 2020 was that its technocrats (such as Tegnell) were all-powerful. It’s a paradox that will not sit well with many anti-lockdown campaigners who see the evil technocracy as the problem, and want to sweep away the ‘blob’.’
Hmmm……didn’t Tegnell end up getting sidelined? But the citizenry listened to him because he radiated competence and integrity.
In fact it was our technocrats who were all powerful: ‘The Science’
Gumby Whitty bossed Bunter.
But ours were Vicars of Bray turning and twisting to the winds of the U.S., the EU and W.H.O., politicians themselves within a global cabal of internationalist health functionaries out of control, still out of democratic control.
We also have a systemic problem of culture in Whitehall. Independence of thought is deprecated instead of encouraged.
We really are going to need a better ‘blob’
“We also have a systemic problem of culture in Whitehall. Independence of thought is deprecated instead of encouraged.”
Yeah, well, here and it seems everywhere else, some places a bit better, some much worse. All at the same time, in very similar ways, using similar language. Blaming events here on figures and factors specific to the UK doesn’t make sense (though of course the ex-PM and others are culpable).
Of course it makes sense, in a U.K. context.
We can’t fix the world, but we are entitled to debate how we might try to improve our own country, where we at least have a vote.
But yes, the World Health Organisation suffered, is suffering, a bad case of mission creep.
Similar actions took place in many developed countries very much due to a lack of capacity for, encouragement of, independent thought within the functionary class and society at large.
Socialist fascism.
“We can’t fix the world, but we are entitled to debate how we might try to improve our own country”
True but in doing that we need to recognise the global context. You say the WHO suffered from “mission creep” – this is doubtless true (and inevitable, that’s exactly what any body will do if allowed to) but how come almost every world government allowed it to suffer from mission creep?
Because they don’t control the W.H.O.
A lot of its funding is private.
Well some of it is private but it only has the power it’s given by members who choose to follow its directives and who are eager to sign up to its “treaties”
There is a great deal of control over the W.H.O.
‘…..over 80 per cent of WHO’s funding relies on “voluntary contributions,” meaning any amount of money given freely by donors, whether member states, NGOs, philanthropic organisations or other private entities.
These voluntary contributions are typically earmarked for specific projects or diseases,’
But not from those who should control it, our representatives:
‘….the sheer size of the funds from the Gates Foundation compromises WHO’s independence.’
Euronews.next 030223
Unfortunately the W.H.O. still thinks it is doing a great job.
Certainly, within the U.S. that opinion is not widely shared.
‘Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic Chairman Brad Wenstrup opened today’s hearing by detailing four major examples of the WHO bowing to political pressure from the CCP: “We saw the WHO deny that COVID-19 was spread via human-to-human transmission, based entirely on the word of the Chinese government. The WHO delayed naming COVID-19 a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, a World Health Organization procedure that, amongst other things, would have allowed for the procurement and distribution of scarce supplies, all because the Chinese Communist Party told them the spread was under control. The WHO delayed serious measures to counter the global spread of COVID-19, because the CCP was only worried about their own bottom line. When the WHO produced a report evaluating the possible origins of COVID-19, it became unquestionably evident that the entire report was nothing but more Chinese propaganda.”
Dr. Atul Gawande, Assistant Administrator for Global Health at USAID, recognized the failures of the WHO during the COVID-19 pandemic
“We want respect for our sovereignty, and so we also limit how much WHO can control or demand things of us. And that is one of the challenges here, that we are protective of our own sovereignty and therefore do not want to have those tools challenged or potentially challenge us or other Member States.
14 Dec 2023 U.S. Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic hearing
It would be good to hear something similar from our own government, but Gumby Whitty is thick as thieves with Farrar, now Chief Scientist at W.H.O.
Both are also close to Pantsdown. They, together with the well named Hancock, Cummings, Gove all conspired together in the biggest health policy disaster this country has ever seen, which what passes for ‘the establishment’ today are now conspiring to cover up.
Didn’t Trump withdraw the US from the WHO?
And yet:
WHO DECIDES WHAT IS IN THE PANDEMIC ACCORD?The pandemic accord is being determined by governmental leaders from 194 countries through an ongoing negotiation process, facilitated by the World Health Organization (WHO). Once the final agreement is decided, each country will choose whether to be a party to it.
The Pandemic Accord Explained: What Countries are Doing to Protect Against Future Global Health Emergencies (unfoundation.org)
I have yet to see compelling evidence that this was a “health policy disaster” which suggests sincere intentions. We shall never know for sure I suspect.
Amnesty wrote a report on the health policy disaster:
‘…..the government must learn lessons from its disastrous decisions and not repeat the same mistakes.’
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/care-homes-report
Sorry obviously missing the point but don’t see how what you’ve linked to is connected to what we’re discussing or this thread in general.
Yeah fair points but the whole crux of Tegnell’s argument and the whole inquiry pantomime must still revolve around Covid death figures which were, as we all know, made up entirely of globally synchronised lying.
As Normal Fenton points out, the UK government’s official Covid death figures between 2020 and 2021 were 137,000. The ONS death figures directly from Covid via a Fenton FOI for the same period are 6,183.
This was one giant globally synchronised exaggeration festival. Much like they tried with previous ‘pandemics’ like Swine flu, but this time they fist slammed all the right behavioural nudge buttons. So while it’s interesting to see Tegnell up there, it still doesn’t take a spade anywhere near the central pyramid of bullshit.
“ it still doesn’t take a spade anywhere near the central pyramid of bullshit.”
Very well put. There was no pandemic, no “emergency”, nothing that should have got close to the radar of the state looking to react in any unusual way.
Absolutely.
I do not see a paradox
the blob was frantic for more and sooner. There has been no persuasive evidence of calls for restraint by the blob, in which I include the academics they appointed and followed.
Tegnell submitted his written evidence months ago. Having seen the way the inquiry is going he clearly decided he could stay silent no longer.
Vindicated at last!
Tegnell was an expert in his field who also had the courage of his convictions to do what he knew was best.
Our hapless duo of Whitless and Unballanced where mediocrities who looked over the fence at China and Italy and copied what they where doing.
Where’s your evidence that Whitty and Vallance are “mediocrities”? Funny that pretty much every other “public health” “expert” on the planet turned out to be equally “mediocre” at the same time. I keep banging on about this but I think the problem is to do with character, honesty, motivation, not with “competence”. To get to the top in any field connected to the state you need to be politically savvy.
Nah. They were definitely coming under pressure from the politicians, forbidden or not… The real difference is that the ‘technocrats’ knew that they would be held accountable for their decisions.
No opportunity to gaslight later with:
There are dangers when unelected officials get to decide what happens. The Swedish model is not necessarily good. If we had had that in the UK, the civil service would have had people in camps for breaching lockdown rules.
But would whoever made such a decision be held accountable for it later? In terms of being fired from their jobs if they got it badly wrong? Or doing jail time if they went beyond their powers? Or being pilloried if found to be hypocrites?
But they wouldn’t ever be found to have got it badly wrong, other than not having put ENOUGH people in camps SOON and HARD and WIDELY enough of course.
What got me was the labour opposition gleefully supporting every lockdown measure knowing that they would finally rid themselves of the fiscally Incompetent tag and now they’ve passed that tag to the Conservative Party. Poor Bojo couldn’t see it.
I think Johnson saw it coming. The government was borrowing hand over fist and he knew it would have to be paid for/paid back.
I’m reminded of this brief scene from The Simpsons: That’s a problem for future Homer. Man I don’t envy that guy.
Not sure where the words “came out better” are quoted from, as they don’t appear in Tegnell’s submission (although they are of course true!). Having read through his submission, I’d say that “devastating” is a slightly overblown description of it, at least in view of the likely effect it no doubt had on Hallett et al. A lot of the 91 answers he gives are of the “Don’t know/not enough information yet/not my area” type. A number of these answers convey important information, but I’d describe only one or two as fundamentally, crucially important: his answer to Q40, for instance:
“Sweden’s constitutional order does not allow for the declaration of a state
of emergency. Fundamental civil rights and freedoms can only be
suspended in the case of war. Public health emergencies are therefore
regulated by ordinary law, which allocates responsibilities. It is legally
impossible to enforce a General quarantine or ‘lockdown’ measures.”
Tegnell’s answers to Qs 43-72 can be summed up by saying that, given the legal impossibility of enforcing a ‘general quarantine’ (lockdown), there never was one. The population was ‘advised’ but only in extremely circumstances coerced – eg masking on trains and buses, briefly in 2021, ‘limited’ air travel restrictions etc – very little of which was legally binding. [All this should have applied in the UK too, of course]
(Q74) On ‘super-spreader’ events:
‘No increase in cases was seen after the event [Eurovision] so it cannot be called super
spreading. Actually the geographic area were the event took place had a
lower level of spread at that time than cities on the other side of the
border ie in Denmark.’
(Q84) On Swedish mortality (the last sentence of which is most significant):
“Death rates are higher in Sweden than our Nordic neighbours but lower
that the UK. Exact data can be taken from a number of sources, as I am
sure you are aware. Excess mortality differs slightly depending on the
method but Sweden is at the same level as the Nordic countries and
sometimes lower. UK has a considerable higher excess mortality.”
(Q85) Sweden, according to the Hallett Enquiry, has been criticised by other countries:
Tegnell’s response: ” In general, they have asked for stronger more legally enforced measures often due to a lack of understanding of the actual situation.”
Devasting stuff, if you’re prepared to be devastated. My suspicion is that the Hallett Enquiry is only too pleased to minimise Tegnell’s comments and not be remotely devastated. That’s the problem we’ve got.
Says it all for me! and I love the embedded video from Vaxi Taxi.
https://thewhiterose.uk/the-milgram-and-asch-experiments/
How about Anders replacing Hallett?
It would mean tearing up and wasting the pre-prepared report though – what a waste!