Kemi Badenoch’s new Shadow Education Minister, Neil O’Brien, backed keeping schools closed during Covid lockdowns and said Prof. Sunetra Gupta and other lockdown sceptics “have a hell of a lot to answer for”. The Telegraph has more.
Neil O’Brien, who has been an MP since 2017 and is a former Health Minister, was one of Mrs Badenoch’s first picks for her new team, announced on Monday.
Mr. O’Brien was a supporter of lockdown measures to contain the spread of Covid during the pandemic, including the closure of schools.
The new Shadow Minister used social media to share data studies that he said proved shutting schools reduced transmission. He also appeared to suggest that he was content with schools being closed as one of the “trade-offs” needed to keep the infection rate down.
Weeks after the third lockdown was announced in January 2021, with schools shutting again to most children, he shared a study he said showed “closing educational settings was the second most effective intervention in reducing R”, the way the spread of Covid was measured. …
He also expressed concern about schools reopening the following month, when the Government announced its roadmap out of Covid lockdowns. Boris Johnson announced then that schools and colleges would open for all students on March 8th.
He wrote that “a cautious, data-driven approach is right” adding: “Newly published Sage [Science Advisory Group for Emergencies] report puts the effect of school reopening on R at between 10% and 50% – huge range of uncertainty still.”
Worth reading in full.
O’Brien notoriously smeared Professor Sunetra Gupta and other lockdown sceptics including Toby, Allison Pearson, Ross Clark and Julia Hartley-Brewer in the Observer in January 2021, saying they “have a hell of lot [sic] to answer for”. In spring 2021 he set up an awful ‘fact-checking’ website called Anti-Virus: The COVID-19 FAQ that purported to counter the Great Barrington Declaration with regime-approved ‘Science’.
On the other hand, since Covid he’s been a key figure in the battle to convince Government to bring down immigration levels and promote data transparency around the issue. So it’s not all bad.
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Oh dear, that does not indicate a change of behaviour of the Conservative Party, under a new leader I thought might be different from the heir to Blair bunch, do we have another Snake oil salesmen I wonder? Oh dear Kemi that’s not good.
This MP is a complete ‘bar steward’. Academically bright but arrogant and stupid, he has refused to apologise for his actions to try and discredit experts like Professor Sunetra Gupta. I might have been persuaded to support the Tories again by the election of Kemi as Tory leader but not now with this ghastly fellow in her Shadow Cabinet.
but
This.
And Badenochs unwillingness to leave ECHR.
Same old Conservatives?
The Nigerian runs nothing. Same old same old. Gove will likely reappear. Maybe Hancock. Hell, Doris might show up. The Torah party (pace Cameron 2012).
She must think we have short memories. Wrong!
Nope, foxtrot oscar Kemi, no way you’ll get my vote.
“So it’s not all bad.”
Never forgive, never forget.
I think Badenoch is OKish in some respects, for a politician, but she, like all the senior leaders from all the big parties, was a covidian. None of them have apologised or properly recognised the wrongness of what was done, by them.
The Tory party must be destroyed, but it won’t be.
The Convict party. The party of the Rona fascism. You are right she was 100% all for it. How anyone could vote for them is frankly beyond any belief.
Oh dear , we are off & running & Mogwai has already pointed out Kemi reversing the Bus back over SYL aka TR !
Who cares? They’re all as rubbish and untrustworthy as each other. Trusting that anything remotely meaningful will change this time around is as irrational as believing your chronically unfaithful partner when they say this seventh time caught cheating will *definitely* be the last, honestly. Believe that and you’ll believe anything! Trust, loyalty and respect are two-way streets.
It’s all very well making the right noises at the right time, as Jenrick did about immigration, but it’s all just manipulation at the end of the day, and anyone with an ounce of sense is done being manipulated;
”Kemi Badenoch yesterday won the Conservative Party leadership election with the lowest number of votes since voting by members was first allowed more than 25 years ago.
The election saw the lowest turnout since 1998, with almost 30% of the membership—which has itself fallen to a record low—not bothering to vote. Badenoch’s margin of victory over runner-up Robert Jenrick was also the tightest in Tory leadership election history.
This is hardly surprising, given that few within the British conservative movement—whatever remains of it, at least—believe either Badenoch or Jenrick are up to the colossal (some say impossible) job of turning the party around. But of the two, Badenoch appears to be the least conservative.
Her action—as opposed to her rhetoric—on all-important transgender issues has left much to be desired. And unlike Jenrick, Badenoch has failed to commit to a measure said to be essential to tackling illegal immigration. She has even made false claims about France’s efforts to control its borders in an attempt, as desperate as it is opaque, to make up for her evasion.
Commenting on Badenoch’s win, writer Aris Roussinos said the Tory members who turned out to vote “chose continuity … but the country remains restive and hungry for serious change—and is more willing than ever to turn on politicians who fail to deliver it.”
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/uk-tories-already-lack-enthusiasm-for-their-new-leader/
The trouble is, our politicians are not just unfaithful, they have us in a coercive relationship. They want to control who we see, what we say and what we do, but only because they ‘really really love us’.
What has it taken, three months to agree on another duplicate WEFfer? I am utterly fed up with these so-called tories. We have an absolutely broken political system and Badenoch just promotes the same old garbage. All so ruddy pointless.
Meanwhile, over at Labour HQ; ( it’s a stupid paywall )
”Labour to ‘fast track’ asylum claims from Afghanistan, Iran and Syria.
Labour can’t claim to protect women and girls when they’ll be quickly granting asylum to men from misogynistic cultures and ID is now in the bottom of the sea.
This will not end well.”
https://x.com/ArchRose90/status/1853521476361580719
Excerpt from the comments. So this is nice to know;
https://x.com/YisraelChaiAdam/status/1853523140787503369
God help us. Is this a sign of Kemi’s leadership skills, appointing a complete numpty to be Shadow Education Minister? Anyone with his analytical skills is definitely heading for the garbage heap of failed politicians. They have all sold their souls to the corporate/WEF global agenda. I’d expected slightly better from her but it makes no difference really, democracy is broken and it will need more than another election to put it together again.
I have to preface this article with …
I told you so.
https://www.freespeechbacklash.com/article/international-law-fiction
Indeed, International Law is and always will be fiction.
Pretty confused article. International law is an intentional misnomer. The only international semi-legal rules which exist are those codified in treaties souvereign stated agreed to being bound by except when they don’t. Hence, the a statement like international law prohibits that … or international law requires that … is always hogwash and demonstrates an intent to deceive.
For the UK, entering into (or exiting from) international treaties is part of the Royal prerogative whose execution on nominal behalf of the crown is delegated to the prime minister. Conventionally, parliament is consulted before this happens. While this can be (and has been) used for nefarious purpose, there’s nothing inherently nefarious about it. The government is called government because it … well … governs.
It suggests he jumps on nthe bandwagon he thinks will better advance him.
Another MP with a PPE degree, who pretended to understand science and medicine.
Without an abject apology, that man should not be allowed anywhere near power. Poor judgement on part of Kemi Badenoch.
I am in complete agreement. Badenoch is insulting the electorate by promoting intellectual failures such as this.
Looks like the new Conservatives are just the same Consocialists after a hasty “rebrand”.
Have to do better than this, so far it would surprise me if they can.
Where’s the Chingford Skinhead when you need him?
O’Brien is a political guttersnipe. In Spring 2021, at the height of the so-called covid second wave, when spates of deaths in UK care homes – mysteriously occurring right after the initial visitations by the covid vaccineers – had briefly made local TV news headlines all over the country, and when senior members of the HART organisation, including Dr Clare Craig and Dr J Smalley, were trying sincerely to highlight the fact that the new vaccines were not vaccines at all but were experimental gene therapy that had been inadequately trialled, O’Brien launched vicious attack-dog online assaults on them, maligning them personally and traducing their standing, while not replying to their arguments and concerns. His reward was a brief elevation in the ludicrous ministry of levelling up, a push-up as short-lived as it was squalidly earned. No doubt he proved to be useless as well as low and malevolent.
Sounds like the sort of Tory half nut job they need
This illustrates a fundamental problem/ weakness with government-by-political party: People are appointed to posts not because they’re particularly qualified for them but because they’re considered useful allies because of their party-internal clout.
OTOH, were this different, the ready-made complaint technocracy would be lobbed at it.
Regardless of that, appointing O’Brien means Badenoch tacitly approves of everything he did before getting appointed. Not quite the kind silverlining some people claim she must be.
bad Person that one. Hopefully karma prevails
It’s rather early days to trash Kemi. Any way whatever she hopes to do is irrelevant for the next 3 years.
Not really a question of “trashing” anyone in my view.
“Covid” was an act of folly and evil of historically gigantic proportions. We cannot simply “move on”. Anyone in a position of power who went along with, doubled down and still does not show any sign of understanding the wrongness of what was done is simply not fit for office.
I cannot compromise on this.
That’s my vote lost come the next election! Time for Reform!
Disappointed to see Jenrick in Olukemi’s front bench team.