Having read Dominic Cummings’ twitter thread on the Government’s lack of preparedness for the pandemic – I had 10 hours to spare and thought, ‘Why not?’ – I began to suspect that Boris might be a lockdown sceptic. The central plank of Dom’s case against the PM in his thread is that he should have locked down earlier and the reason he didn’t is that he naively thought that a policy of shielding the elderly and vulnerable, and encouraging symptomatic people to quarantine at home, would mean ~60% of the population would become infected over the summer, thereby avoiding a second wave in the autumn/winter, when the NHS would have found it harder to cope due to the annual winter NHS crisis – the so-called ‘herd immunity’ strategy. Hmmm. Sounds pretty sensible to me – and to get an idea of how that would have worked out, we only have to look at Sweden, which avoided a hard lockdown throughout 2020 and had one of the lowest age-adjusted excess mortality rates in Europe.
Dom tries to swat this argument away in his thread, accusing “UK political pundits” of “spreading nonsense on Sweden/lockdowns”, and compares Sweden unfavourably with Denmark. A pretty feeble response, as we’ve pointed out numerous times on Lockdown Sceptics. (see Noah Carl’s piece on Monday for a comprehensive rebuttal of the “Yeah, but, Denmark” critique of Sweden’s approach.) No, the example of Sweden, which refused to lock down and whose health service never came close to being overwhelmed, remains a devastating riposte to the apocalyptic doom-mongering of people like Dom back in March of last year, who were screaming at the Prime Minister to lock everyone in their homes because… the NHS.
As I say, reading that thread, it seems pretty clear that Boris’s instincts were correct and the reason he switched tack in the week leading up to March 23rd was because he was surrounded by bed-wetting hysterics like Mr Cummings.
But today’s Daily Mail confirms it: Boris is a lockdown sceptic. I’ll let the Mail summarise the “explosive allegations”, which Dom has clearly leaked to them:
Boris Johnson referred to Covid as “Kung-Flu” and – before he was infected with the virus – offered to be injected with it live on TV to “show it’s nothing to be scared of”, Dominic Cummings will claim today.
They are among the explosive allegations that Mr Cummings, Mr Johnson’s former chief adviser, will make to MPs investigating the Government’s handling of the epidemic.
In an extraordinary claim, he will accuse the Prime Minister of being responsible for “thousands of deaths” by delaying a second lockdown when a second wave of the virus hit the U.K. in the winter. …
The Mail has learned that Mr Cummings will allege Mr Johnson:
* Argued against tough Covid curbs on the grounds that “it is only killing 80-year-olds”;
* Did say “no more f***ing lockdowns, let the bodies pile high in their thousands”.
* Said he regretted being “pushed” into ordering lockdowns because the “economic damage is more damaging than the loss of life”.
No doubt Boris could have expressed his scepticism more diplomatically – assuming Dom is telling the truth – but the substance of these points is correct: for those under 65 and with no underlying health conditions, the virus is nothing to be scared of; the average age of those who’ve died from COVID-19 in the UK is about 80; and the economic damage caused by the lockdowns will certainly outweigh the harms the lockdowns have prevented, if any.
Should anyone be in any doubt that Boris is a 64 carat lockdown sceptic, Dom has some more “devastating” points:
Mr Cummings will also say that before the decision, Mr Johnson vowed: “I’m going to be the mayor of Jaws, like I should have been in March (when the first lockdown was ordered).”
The Prime Minister has said that he regards the mayor in the Jaws movie – who refuses to close the resort’s beach even after a shark has killed tourists, for fear of damage to the local economy – as one of his “heroes”.
I must say, I take some comfort from this. Regular readers will know that until that fateful U-turn on March 23rd 2020 I was a huge fan of Boris’s and have struggled to reconcile the Rabelaisian, liberty-loving character I’ve known for the past 38 years with the furrowed-browed headmaster of the last 15 months. As I asked the journalist Quentin Letts in our recent Free Speech Union chat: How did Sid James become Hattie Jacques?
Turns out, Boris’s Jamesian side wasn’t entirely abandoned; it was just just kept in check by the Jacquists in 10 Downing Street.
Presumably, one reason Boris allowed himself to be pushed around by these chin-wobblers is because he was worried they’d accuse him of needlessly killing thousands of people if he didn’t do what they said. In which case, Dom’s suicide bomber routine is actually quite helpful. Boris allowed Dom to browbeat him into following his lockdown strategy and the disloyal bastard is still accusing him of being a mass murderer. So Boris has little to lose from ignoring these Cassandras from now on. They’ll turn on him whatever he does so there’s no point in trying to keep them on side.
It’s time to assert yourself, Prime Minister. At the next meeting of the Cabinet, announce that you’re going to reopen on June 21st come hell or high water and anyone who thinks that’s a bad idea should resign now or forever hold their peace. Thereafter, if the usual suspects start briefing against stage 4 of the Roadmap, including those snakes on SAGE, he should sack the bloody lot of them.
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The Bank of England’s mismanagement?
Yeah right, mismanagement.
They had no idea, no idea whatsoever that announcing categorically no more bond purchases would cause a problem in the market just when Truss was announcing her budget.
Give me a break.
Presumably the Bank of England also allowed Fishy to “mismanage” his way through Lockdown to the tune of five hundred billion pounds principally via the issue of dodgy loans, ‘eat out to help out’ and a ‘sit on your arse getting paid to do FA’ scheme comically named ‘furlough.’
Yeah right.
Why have I got a nagging feeling that the B o E is being run by the WEF? No, surely not.
Mmmmm, up to a point Lord Copper. The big unfunded sum wasn’t the £2bn from the 45% to 40% tax cut but the open ended, 2 year commitment on energy costs. At the time this was being forecast to cost £100bn +. Again, a panic reaction. Sunak has largely benefited from the gas price coming down & a mild autumn.
How can a 2-year commitment be open-ended? And how come the markets did not panic when every rich world government on the planet shut down large portions of their economy and started paying people to do nothing, and the open-ended commitment to buy “vaccines” etc?
You’re right. Why was there an such a variance in response? My point is merely that it shouldn’t be portrayed as a binary choice between ILDs and mini budget. There were a whole lot of other things going on with asymmetric impacts.
Because there’s a point up to which Govt debt raises concern not panic. Take it beyond then you get panic.
“It’s extraordinary that this story hasn’t been covered by Britain’s financial journalists.”
Hardly. It’s entirely to be expected given that most/all of Britain’s mainstream journalists and their bosses, editors, owners, financial or otherwise, are fully bought into the narrative.
With the possibly honourable exception of Liam Halligan
Indeed. The only part where I disagree with the article is where he describes the market size by stating it as ‘The total value of liabilities hedged with LDI strategies was $1.8 trillion in 2021.’.
LDI, as he describes earlier, has absolutely nothing to with hedging, to the contrary. It is a pure interest rate speculation, and one that actually reduces or negates any previous and underlying asset/liability match of a pension fund engaging in it.
The whole BoE board should be fired for allowing LDI to happen and those who sold and practiced it should be prosecuted and made personally liable for its losses.
The central bank failure here also reminds me of PCR’s splendid analysis and assessment of the FED’s sole responsibility for bringing about the Great Depression.
https://www.unz.com/proberts/is-the-federal-reserve-merely-incompetent-or-is-there-a-dark-agenda/
https://www.unz.com/proberts/an-incompetent-federal-reserve-board-caused-the-great-depression-and-the-new-deal-that-gave-congress-power-to-new-executive-branch-regulatory-agencies/
The one time in a century when central banks should really provide credit and liquidity amply and immediately, they deliberately always seem to fail to do so.
We’d better be off without them, as the period and system before they came into existence showed.
Best to give them all the Icahn treatment and to turn their defined benefit pensions to ‘whatever is left in the fund’ ones.
I work in the LDI industry (as in, it’s what I do 80% of my time at work), so like to think I can speak about it with some degree of confidence.
There is nothing wrong in principle with LDI, in my view. Most pension schemes would like to fund their liabilities with secure assets that pay fixed or inflation linked cashflows. Only goverment bonds fit the bill (assuming of course that the government doesn’t default) as no other assets are as secure or provide long dated cashflows (some pension scheme liabilities stretch out by more than 50 years).
The problem is that the return on gilts is too low, and most pension schemes have a funding gap that they need to fill. They do so by borrowing money, collateralised by the gilts that they hold, to invest in higher returning assets, for example equities.
What happened was that the value of gilts fell, which meant that the loans needed to be propped up by more gilts. For some pension funds they were running so short of gilts that they had to start selling them to pay down the loans with cash. This led to a fire selling spiral that eventually ended when the Bank of England stepped in to support the market.
The background to LDI is that the government and regulators have absolutely encouraged pension schemes to adopt this strategy. Largely in good faith, in my view.
For example, all pension schemes need to pay a levy to the Pension Protection Fund each year. How large this is depends on a number of factors, but one is investment risk, and the more of your pension scheme liabilities you hedge the lower your levy is.
I think the Bank of England acted ineptly and arrogantly, but I don’t necessarily feel there was a hidden agenda.
All this is aggravated by regulatory and central bank incompetence and failed interventions. The FSA/FCA are also complicit in the failures.
The next stupidity, scandal and black hole….
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/pensions-retirement/news/gold-plated-public-sector-pensions-cost-taxpayers-150pc/
This is actually the real divide in our societies and the real fight, the private vs the public sector, and what will break Western democracies soon.
It’s even worse in Europe and the US, but the UK seems to be unique in having uncapped automatic indexing on DB public sector pensions.
As it was unique in having sold all its gold at the low and having issued massive amounts of long term inflation linked bonds, instead of issuing long term fixed coupon ones, during a prolonged period of artificially low interest rates.
Lunatics in charge of the asylum at the BoE and the Treasury.
Let’s not forget Carnage Carney had a spell at the B o E. I wonder what mischief he got up to during that gig?
‘“poor financial regulation…’
its always the part of the market that’s still free that’s the problem therefore… MORE REGULATION!
Two years of economic shutdown, the economy awash with valueless money, Truss promising to throw more valueless money onto the inflationary fire and the markets think ‘bad risk’ maybe even default. An energy crisis that Government policy is to make it worse.
The fire was already raging, Truss just threw more fuel on it.
Lowered tax rates are suppose to be accompanied by lower Govt spending otherwise higher spending. Lower tax rates during inflation caused by too much money chasing too few goods just adds more money to the chase.
The Bank of England should have done what exactly? It’s not the Government as the article suggests it must be.
They should have been more aggressive in raising interest rates rather than disappointing the markets with a modest rise.
The misnomer and myth that lower taxes ALWAYS bring in less revenue, perpetrated through all the usual avenues to stir up a storm is / was the chokehold many an authority and expert have used before – though in this case the dystopian elites who want to bring in their new system are showing their colours [by any means necessary it would seem] once again. But the Conservatives (so-called) bend over and take it as if it’s never been their bread and butter?
Naturally Labour (and their cheerleaders) play their predictable part too with all the usual race-to-the-bottom fearporn predictions which many unfortunately fall for, especially during times of uncertainty (though at least it’s opposition in the form we’d expect) but any semblance of bringing us back from the brink is now in full swing I guess.
I’m not an economist but I understand the basics of a genuine free market. Nothing makes sense in any of this posturing of doom and gloom other than it has to be an organised destruction of the system we have – to usher in a system we would never want (if it was genuinely explained and to the uninitiated).
As far as the B of E to play this tactic at a time like this reveals their intent, if indeed bankers were of the sort to be trusted even a morsel for their own benefit and monetary gain (at least with their desire for profit we know where we stood). Now we’ve thrown out the old with the new, the pertinent question is where are they now to get their ill-gotten gains? I guess it’s safe to look to ESGs and CBDCs for where they’re expecting.
“the pertinent question is where are they now to get their ill-gotten gains?:
The poor bloody infantry as usual.
US.
Deleted. Posted in error.
Dead right. Andrew Bailey is a WEF stooge and we know that they don’t want Western countries to have pro-growth policies. They want increased indebtedness because that gives them power via the financial markets.
I tend to the view that the intention is to utterly bankrupt the country and then sort of sell it off or mortgage us to something like the IMF.
I can call my wife in evidence to confirm I suspected the hand of the BoE in Liz Truss’s deownfall from the beginning, She should ask suitable questions in the HoC to force Ministers to confirm (doubtful) or deny and lie about this.
Yes, obvious isn’t it. WEF wanted Sunak. BoE did the dirty work to fake alarmism from MSM. I have to say though that Truss seemed too inept to understand what was happening.
Although all of this it true (the BOE and government in general setting up the rules for the LDI meltdown to happen in certain circumstances) and the moral hazard is disgraceful, it would be wrong to exonerate Truss because of it (and don’t forget that she had already pledged gajillions with an energy price cap). It was her (and Kwast’s) job to KNOW these rules and that her actions might end up triggering the meltdown. If she didn’t know, that is bad. If she DID know and proceeded anyway, that is even worse.
Her ineptitude has meant 0 debate on whether a change to lower taxes and business friendly is a better alternative to more of the same high taxes and control. We all lose because of that.
It was pretty obvious that the Bank of England (no doubt with the support of the Treasury) DELIBERATELY destabilised the Markts/currency.
They carried out a coup ….. in plain sight. And CON MPs let them do it.
Aye – Tobes is way behind on this one. Even Dan Bongino reported on it on 28th September (I don’t normally watch him, was looking for a comment on Nordstream and it was there.) 6 mins in 3 mins long.
https://rumble.com/v1lv248-who-bombed-the-pipeline-ep.-1861-the-dan-bongino-show.html