More than two and a half years since Boris Johnson confined the nation to its homes, the Guardian has finally decided it’s time to run some criticism of it. In what I’m sure you’ll agree is a timely piece entitled “Boris Johnson’s Covid laws took away our rights with flick of a pen. Don’t let that happen again” (as though Boris did it without any encouragement from, I don’t know, the Labour Party and the Guardian, whose only objections were that he hadn’t gone harder and faster) barrister Adam Wagner (who has written a book on the subject, Emergency State: How We Lost Our Liberties in the Pandemic and Why it Matters) sets out the case against the Government’s illiberal response to the pandemic.
It’s just over two and a half years since Boris Johnson gave us a “very simple instruction”, that we “must stay at home”, followed – three days later – by a law that for the first time in our history would impose a 24-hour curfew on almost the entire population. The years, months, weeks and days since have been so relentless – and at times almost beyond belief – that it is difficult to begin to process them. Many of us have experienced personal bereavement, and everyone has been touched in some way.
But as tempting as it is to move on, to focus on other important issues vexing our society, there are some aspects of the past three years we must face up to.
There are a hundred lenses through which to view this important period in modern history, but as a barrister I have looked at the more than 100 laws that placed England in lockdown, imposed hotel quarantine, international travel restrictions, self-isolation, face coverings and business closures.
These were probably the strangest and most extraordinary laws in England’s history, imposing previously unimaginable restrictions on our social lives, bringing into the realm of the criminal law areas of life – where we could worship, when we could leave home, even who we could hug – that had previously been purely a matter of personal choice.
By early 2020, the Johnson government already had form for seeing democracy as a gadfly to be swatted away, having tried, and failed – thanks to the Supreme Court – to shut down Parliament for weeks to ram through a Brexit deal. When the pandemic hit, it is no surprise that it took the same approach to involving parliament in the most consequential decisions and laws in living memory.
The Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 allowed for ministers to enact the coronavirus regulations with almost no parliamentary scrutiny. Of 109 lockdown laws, only eight were considered by parliament before coming into force, usually only a day before. The rest became law (literally) as soon as Matt Hancock, the then Health Secretary, put his signature at the bottom of the page.
I am not suggesting that emergency law-making would ever be straightforward and neat, following all the processes of ordinary legislation. During public emergencies, events move swiftly and mercilessly. But it did not have to be like this.
Also troubling was the constant refrain that the Government was ‘following the science’, by which it meant its scientific advisory group, SAGE. But decisions were ultimately taken in the extremely powerful but opaque COVID-19 Cabinet committees, presided over by four ministers – Boris Johnson, Rishi Sunak, Matt Hancock and Michael Gove. No minutes were released and no explanation offered of how decisions were made. This was the most powerful Government committee since the Second World War, but received no scrutiny. Important political decisions need to be understood, scrutinised and tested. These hardly were.
Parliament relegated itself to a “1,400-person rubber stamp”, Wagner says; the police, “floundered between excessive and unjustified intrusions into our private lives” and “attempting to stay out of the fray altogether”; the courts ducked responsibility, repeatedly ruling that pandemic policy, “even when it interfered with fundamental rights” was “a matter for Government and Parliament, not judges”.
It should be a wake-up call, he says – “the ease with which ancient freedoms such as the right to protest, to worship, to see our families, were removed essentially by decisions of a tiny group of ministers” – as it is only a matter of time before a new crisis will arise.
Many of the comments underneath the article agree Wagner’s got a point, but say it’s about the principle of how the emergency laws were made and scrutinised rather than the measures themselves being wrong or harmful.
Baby steps.
Worth reading in full.
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The short answer is enough to have to mobilise the general population and start a draft.
Very depressing.
They are not mobilising the general population. They are specifically mobilising reservists.
It is Ukraine which is mobilising the general population, and they have recently included women
I have to correct myself. The conscription of women is currently being rubber-stamped by the Ukrainian government; it is not law yet.
It’s amazing what I’ve learned reading and and listening to this stuff, and I’m not sure you would call it all useful…LOL!…….but because it’s designated a Special Military Operation it would currently be against Russian Law to use conscripted soldiers….
Very difficult to get accurate casualty figures due to the disparate nature of ‘Russian’ forces deployed
The ‘Russian’ army in Ukraine is not a single organisation, but several factions with their own commanders, control system and structure.
Prigozhin/Wagner answers to Putin personally.
Troops from the DNR and LNR
Regular Russian Army
Rosgvardia National Guard (OMON Special Forces report direct to their Director Victor Zolotov)
Kadyrovite Chechen Militia
The BBC found a thousand killed Russian Army officers just from open source data and analysis. In all, 750 of them are low-ranking officers, lieutenants, captains. All are those who work “on the ground” – directly in charge in combat. Typically officers represent 8%-11% of losses.
Make of that what you will.
And of course, if the BBC said it ………
‘The journalists compiled the statistics based on reports from local authorities, the media, and relatives of the dead (while, as noted, heads of Russian regions are speaking publicly about the deaths of military personnel with increasing frequency). They estimate that their list contains 40-60% fewer names than the actual number who’ve been buried in Russia.
Of the 5,701 identified Russian military personnel killed in Ukraine, 966 (17%) were officers. Junior officers accounted for the largest share of casualties. Four generals and 34 colonels were also among the dead.’
BBC 19 Aug 22
‘“I think it’s safe to suggest that the Russians have probably taken 70 or 80,000 casualties in the less than six months. Now that is a combination of killed in action and wounded in action, that number might be a little lower, little higher, but I think that’s kind of in the ballpark,”
US Deputy Secretary of Defense for Political Affairs Colin Kahl 08 Aug 22
Everyone on here is, of course, entitled to their own opinion.
Due to the size of the Ukrainian front, Russia has been well short of troops since day one.
Mobilising 300,000 reservists won’t change that. What equipment will they receive, I wonder?
As you say, everyone here is entitled to their own opinion. The figures you are quoting are just that – someone’s opinion.
That is why I make clear where the figures come from, obviously.
In all previous international conflicts I recall breathless reports from flak-jacket clad reporters on the front line, some embedded with the troops. We got a sense of life on the front line from them.
What has been completely absent in Ukraine has been live reporting from independent journalists (and even Ukrainian journalists) commenting on the successes of the “home team”.
I can’t help wondering what Ukraine and the Western media are trying to hide by preventing such reporting. All that is published comes fully sanitised from “official Ukrainian sources” aka Zelensky’s script writers.
There is however plenty of reporting from the other side of the border, by Western and Russian journalists which of course is never mentioned to us, but which can be found on-line.
Well, going back to Vietnam, it was arguably the reports of embedded reporters that scuppered the war.
And it has been said that WWII couldn’t have been won with the same type and amount of reporting and if the ‘home front’ had their eyes glued to the telly.
Make your own mind up what truth there is in that and whether a good or bad thing.
Me, if I was in Putin’s shoes, I would want what was on Russian telly controlled strictly as possible.
Plenty of ‘reporting’ from the other side of the border which you do not quote, reference.
Why would that be?
Here you are:
‘Everything is simple. “Musicians” [nickname for Wagner PMC] arrived in the LPR around mid-March. The approximate number of their contingent at that time was up to 1,500 people. It’s a regiment, but a castrated one: there is a lot of infantry, little armor, artillery and other things. They were not prepared for such a war. Their task was to chase negroes and to take away oil fields in favor of hucksters.
In the very first couple of weeks, they suffered huge losses in Popasna – killed, wounded and refuseniks.
Gradually, in the course of hostilities, the professional “dogs of war” started running out, and there was nothing to replenish them with. Thus, the task has been set, the budgets have been assigned, the Star of the Hero of Russia has been awarded, but there are not enough performers.
And that is why social networks are now flooded with military-romantic advertisements for PMCs, designed for juvenile fuckers, and a search goes through prisons. Requirements for applicants are sharply reduced. Because not professionals are required, but meat for the assault infantry.
Of course, the recruitment of convicts in PMCs is not an alternative to mobilisation. They carry out assault missions in very narrow directions there. The entire burden of the war is being carried by the very “iron helmets” – the mobilised men of the LPR and the DPR. And here a question should be asked to the owners of Prigozhin: how did it happen that you started the war, having cartoons instead of a combat-ready army, since now you have to recruit repeat offenders?’
Blog “Leon 1967” Russian LiveJournal 17 Sept 22
RT (which we are not allowed to read) reports Russian Defence Minister says Russian deaths are 5 937 versus Ukraine deaths 61 207.
it also reports Russia to begin partial mobilisation and that Russian forces have thwarted attempts by Ukraine to mount an offensive in southern part of the Country.
This is a ‘Truman Show’ War, and I don’t believe anything either side says…
The only conclusion I draw from this article is that there has been a great deal of unnecessary human suffering. I assume the author, in the interests of balance, will similarly address the quantification of the numbers of dead and wounded Ukrainians in this tragic and unnecessary conflict.
where are the peace brokers?
Shades of “Life of Brian”?