Graham Brady, the former leading Tory backbencher, has revealed that Boris Johnson asked him “How many people would you let die?” when he said Lord Sumption was right to challenge lockdown. It shows how deeply Boris had been taken in by his Government’s own fearmongering about the virus, particularly after being hospitalised with it himself. Here’s an excerpt from Brady’s memoir, published in the Telegraph.
I watched much of the Government’s early handling of the COVID-19 pandemic unfold with deep concern. On Thursday March 19th 2020, the Government pushed emergency legislation through the House of Commons without a vote. The legislation would give the Government sweeping powers, especially to spend taxpayers’ money. David Davis had the presence of mind to table an amendment to require six-monthly renewal, which a number of us supported. This was the first of many moments during the pandemic when the complete absence of a functioning Opposition was felt. Surely Sir Keir Starmer should have wanted to ensure Parliamentary oversight of the Government during a crisis?
In the middle of May 2020, I secured an in-person meeting with Johnson, the first since December. He looked weary, certainly not back to full strength after contracting Covid himself. He seemed oblivious to the massive economic, social and non-Covid health costs that the lockdown would cause.
He readily agreed with me that the evidence suggested that the important interventions were hand hygiene and disinfection of surfaces, but when I suggested that the two-metre ‘social distancing’ rule should be reduced, he recoiled with horror.
“It’s people like us who get it really bad!” he exclaimed, looking at me. “Not athletic… I was a fatty… 17 and a half stone when I went into hospital.”
That same month, after stories emerged about the PM’s Chief Adviser, Dominic Cummings, having broken lockdown rules by driving from London to his parents’ home in Durham, with a side trip to Barnard Castle, I saw Boris again. He opened the door to his office looking like shit: frizzy hair and black rings around his eyes. I was astonished to see that on this occasion, his chaperone was the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak.
I started with substantive points about the restrictions, reminding him of the impact on the aviation sector, which threw him a bit. Rishi said nothing but was obviously enjoying seeing someone else try to make the case for more nuanced restrictions that would do less collateral damage. I then launched into Cummings. “This is damaging the party, the Government and damaging you personally. Colleagues are really angry.”
Boris spat back: “I think backbench MPs have been contemptible! They have been spineless chickenshit. They need to develop some backbone. The 2019 guys need to understand that they wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Dom.”
I said that I had no personal animus against Cummings but that the row was hugely damaging and most of us thought he should resign.
“But don’t you believe his account? I believe it!”
“The Barnard Castle story is obvious bullshit – no sane person would drive his wife and small child 30 miles to test his eyesight!”
Boris looked totally perplexed at this. “HE’S NOT SANE!” he replied, as though that should have been obvious.
I briefly wondered whether Boris was also losing it.
As I left, Rishi left with me and invited me into his office to discuss the two-metre rule further. “You’re right, of course; it’s all going wrong because it was a mistake to put the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Officer in the press conference every day,” he said. “We thought it would give us cover, but now we can’t do anything sensible without them denouncing it as a risk.”
Days later, I requested a meeting with Boris about another matter but he phoned me first. “First, can I apologise for being intemperate with you when we met… it’s not your fault, you’re just doing your job, and you do it brilliantly… And I do understand the frustration of colleagues. I responded like that because I was so f—— angry myself. The f—— Barnard Castle optician trip for Christ’s sake!”
On schools, Boris said he agreed. “It’s this stupid f—–g two-metre rule, we’re going to review it – we’ll sort it. It’s these f—–g scientists!” It seemed he was being hoist by his own petard.
I bumped into Sir Robert Syms in the corridor. “There’s no leadership, no direction!”
In mid-June, I finally got a slot for the whole executive committee to meet with Boris. I started by asking the PM to talk us through the balance of risks between COVID-19, non-Covid health, economic cost and civil liberties. He vomited forth a torrent of words. One of his favourite tactics is talking rapidly while not leaving space for anyone to interject.
About 10 minutes in, I tried to push him on getting Britain back to work and ending the 14-day quarantine period. This merely triggered more waffle. “Moving as fast as we can! It’s the bloody scientists! It’s like that terrible Freudian dream where your feet are moving rapidly – but you don’t go anywhere.” Looking vaguely shifty, he asked me, “Do you have that?”
“No,” I replied. “Thankfully not.” I was tempted to add that it might be because my conscience was clear.
Long after the easing of restrictions and the introduction of the ‘Rule of Six’, I was invited to meet Boris for a drink in his Commons office, after having had no contact through the summer. I assumed that I would, at least, find him well briefed.
I tried to have a rational conversation with him about how the earlier link between infection rates and hospitalisation had been broken. He looked desperate to prove me wrong. “Hospital numbers are rising! It’s 192 this week, last week it was 100, the future looks grim.” He told me why Lord Sumption was wrong to make the case that people should be trusted to manage their own risk. “What about the people you infect?”
I replied that I was with Jonathan Sumption. People can also take responsibility for those around them. He gave me a frightened look. “How many people would you let die?”
We had already looked at the figures showing that hospital admissions and transfer to ICU were no longer tracking infection rates. I added that quality of life matters too. I asked him when the ‘Rule of Six’ would end and by what criteria. He gave me a bewildered look, as though it was a crazy question.
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These idiots in charge, apparently incapable of looking through their own bloody front windows to see NO GODDAMN PANDEMIC.
And no goddamn pandemic in the daily deaths data, either. Thirty seconds of basic research to get normal number of deaths per 100K population per year in England and Wales, then another thirty seconds of primary school arithmetic to get that to a daily average. No goddamn pandemic.
Midazolam.
But NO – if you aren’t “keeping up” with the hysteria via your smartphone, you aren’t “paying attention”.
Clown World.
It was a Plandemic, scamdemic and also a pingdemic, who were those bloody idiots who downloaded that. Only skivers who would use that as a tool to further their skiving would download that, and a bunch of fools.
“It’s people like us who get it really bad!” he exclaimed, looking at me. “Not athletic… I was a fatty… 17 and a half stone when I went into hospital.” Spotted his guilt. Not a healthy lifestyle in that job, after all. It occurred to me then that if he was in better shape he might have dismissed the affair, rather than falling into it. Incidentally, his weight was advertised at that time, by one of the workers in the hospital (probably against the rules, but there you are).
Remember that it was quite soon after the general election, and a lot of it looked like the continuation of a campaign, rather than normal government activity.
Thatcher always said that physical fitness was the key to making good decisions under duress, and I believe it.
Where were you, Maggie, when we needed you? I feel pretty certain (and I feel ready to resist the torrent of objection) that Maggie would have told the lot of them to get a grip and get on with their lives as normal.
…get a grip? Oh that makes me feel unsafe. Maggie bad.
How so?
I understand, if you were a miner whose dad was a miner, whose dad was a miner, and all you ever knew was mining, and all you ever knew was being treated as some sort of superhuman for your basic (albeit hard physical) efforts, then yes, Maggie made decisions that wrecked your gig.
When I was a minor, she stole my milk.
Now we learn that there were people in government questioning the government diktats. Why on earth did they allow Johnson to be captured by these moronic scientists who only had one point of view. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. What a desperate, soulless world we have created for ourselves, all because of their mantra – ‘follow the science’. That should be their epitaph on their gravestones.
When you plan to infiltrate institutions, you make sure that you nab the most influential positions. Always remember that the chief scientists were not mad individualists, but part of the cult. Phone calls with Fauci, positions at the WHO, shares in Big Pharma – and the aura of credibility for egotistical politicians.
And don’t forget Cummings evidence to the Inquiry- “we had these Bill Gates types telling us….”
And there we have corporate fascism right there!
We was thinking maybe next Thursday?
(Two Ronnies, funeral director / mafia boss sketch).
More like next Tuesday!
If you want a laugh, watch the old ‘Yes, Prime Minister’ that will be transmitted tonight at 20:30 by the beeb on BBC Four; whoever planned that must have a sense of humour, anyway.
The Whitehall deep state, or Blob if you prefer. Needs draining.
The question reveals much of the mindset.
It’s the sort of question someone who has a god complex would ask. (I suspect that is most politicians and bureaucrats.)
I don’t know about anyone else but I don’t see myself as something to be allowed to live or die by Boris Johnson or anyone in government or in bureaucracy. This idea that they have power of life or death over me is sick.
If a virus or a disease gets me, it gets me. I don’t expect Boris Johnson or Starmer or any of those self important health officials to do anything about it. Leave me be.
We solve our own problems, after first making sure whatever it is, is actually a problem.
Their remit is to serve, advise and recommend. And not exploit emergency powers through the Public Health Act and exaggerate a problem to further an agenda that is not disclosed to the public.
“I was astonished to see that on this occasion, his chaperone was the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak.”
Would that be WEF Young Global Leader Rishi Sunak by any chance?
Whispering “Look Boris, you know what they’ve got on us, you just have to do this OK?. The behavioural psych team’s advertising campaigns are all in place to make sure the public believes this is life or death plus we have Ofcom and the 77th Brigade monitoring the information sphere so none of this will come back on us and you’ll look like a hero. Bill’s coming over next week and if he reports back that things are not going to plan then we’re both fucked. Need I remind you of the alternative for us if we don’t do this?.”
During the first month of the first Lockdown PHE (Public Health England) published daily figures of “cases” as an Excel spreadsheet available for downloading online. Each day The Guardian dutifully transformed the figures accurately into a suitably scary graphic showing cases “doubling every N days” (where, IIRC N was about six). There were at least four problems with these figures.
In my mind the Office of the Government Chief Scientist has lost all credibility: they can hardly have failed to be aware that the pandemic was nowhere near as serious, numerically, as was being touted by the politicians at the daily briefings.
The available to anyone-bothered-to-look data indicated that the spike in infections (however poorly this was measured) had peaked before we were locked down. The pandemic was downgraded. But Johnson went ahead anyway. Unforgiveable.
A conversation some weeks later with the lad helping in our local butcher shop on Saturday (so probably 16/17) who was convinced we were all going to die. I asked him how many (%) of the population died every year ‘normally’. To be fair it’s not the sort of fact that most people walk around with knowing.
So this conversation first had to establish the size of the population then work the basic maths as he was under the impression that 10% were dying. If so – at a population of – say – 65 million people – I asked where all the bodies were – at 10%. That’s alot of dead bodies to deal with. He didn’t believe me.
No-one sensible got up and explained those basic facts. Unforgiveable at every level.
Johnson was completely unable to deal with it and we are all diminished by his – and his cronies – mismanaging of the last 4 years. A s***show.
I totally agree. Incidentally the percentage of the population that die normally per year is roughly 100 divided by the average lifespan. That is, slightly over 1%, or around 600,000. I suggest hysteria is more prevalent in the numerically challenged.
Why do you need to establish the size of the population first? Assuming the population is stable and the average lifespan is 80 years then one-eightieth of the population will probably die each year, i.e. 1.25 per cant.
The size of the population in each age group is uneven. There’s a reason I’m referred to as a ‘boomer’. If the age distribution is skewed and old people are more likely to die then understanding the population is worth it.
However, the butcher’s assistant that Keencook mentioned probably had not the faintest idea that the population was 60-70million (depending on what population you’re referring to) and that about 600,000 people (mostly oldies) die each year. He might even have taken a bit of time to work out what 1% of 60m was.
At the declaration of lockdown on 23 April 2020 the number of deaths per day attributed to the damn bug was still increasing – but the rate by which it was increasing was slowing. In other words it was clearly not exponential. The typical lead time between vulnerable people catching the bug and then dying of it and the rate at which mortality was slowing down was already pointing to a mortality peak in early April (the actual peak for England and Wales was 8 April) which meant that infections had already peaked and were declining at the time of the lockdown.
Sorry for yet more preaching to the converted.
Updated to add: The source information was already available to the general public by then – I would hope the civil service had more timely data.
“Sorry for yet more preaching to the converted.”
We have to hope that a few ‘normies’ – people who may just be cottoning on, even after four years – are reading this. Helps to keep us sane. Keep repeating this stuff.
I do too, every so often, verbally, when the flow of the conversation even glances in that direction, with the phrase, “there wasn’t even a sodding pandemic…”
Cold. Silent. Stares…
The lad didn’t have any idea of population numbers or ages. To be fair, I don’t think at his age, I would have known either. But we could have had it explained in plain terms rather than frightened witless. It was fear that drove it all – fear of the unknown, fear of losing your job, lots of that
Johnson displayed cowardice IMO – but then I wasn’t in his position or know who or what was applying pressure.
Assuming this account is true, the response to the question should have been along the lines of “What do you mean by that, exactly? How many people are we “saving” and by what means exactly is this “saving” achieved, and at what cost?”
As Sowell puts it:
There are three questions that would destroy most of the arguments on the left:
1. Compared to what?
2. At what cost?
3. What hard evidence do you have?
There are very few ideas on the left that can pass all three of those kinds of things.
“This is damaging the party, the Government and damaging you personally” there we have it in black and white, the priorities of these low lifes.
No mention of the economy, childrens’ health, working families, family business, the hospitality industry.
Just Boris Johnson’s job security.
Why ANYONE would want the pig-ignorant fat oaf in charge again is beyond me.
I fell for his boyish, liberal, scruffy, jolly appearance, I’ll admit.
Skin deep, wasn’t it… in stresso veritas (sorry!)
What on earth happened to Johnson between May 2020 and May 2022, when he consigned 100,000s to a meat grinder?
Ah yes – but think of the billions of lives he’s saved by making Net Zero more inclusive.
Boris married Carrie in May 2021.
Sometimes men are led astray by listening to their wives too much.
“How many people would you let die?”
How many would you kill, Boris? Evidently tens of thousands.
That’s the rub.
If you do something you’ll never be accused of killing anyone, or at worst you did your best, under the circumstances, with the information at the time.
If you do nothing, no matter what happens, you’ll be accused of being responsible for the bad things, because you did nothing to stop it.
The population is responsible for that situation. The masses always btay for something to be done.
I think the trick needs to be repositioning ‘doing nothing’ in a more positive way, e.g. waiting for more/better data
Everyone would be better off if they done nothing, especially when it came to NG163.
Boris the Fearmongering Libertarian
Here’s a shocker, an open admission that Covid vaccines were often lethal:
Young man dies weeks after receiving Covid vaccine he was wrongly invited to take by NHS (msn.com)
“When watching Schindler’s List, everyone thinks they’d be Schindler”
Jordan Peterson.
“When the tide goes out, you see who’s not wearing swimming trunks”
Warren Buffet
Bojo thought he had it…
…but no!
I would say that he was worse than kneeler, but at least 2TK is setting out to be a complete and utter CLINT.
Bojo thought he was annointed…
…but was found utterly wanting.
The extract reads very well. Pre-ordered. Should be enlightening !!
Nice arse covering piece !