In an article for today’s Mail on Sunday, Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting says that we should never lock down the country again and have to learn to live with the virus. When even lockdown’s most fervent enthusiasts abandon the policy, you know the argument is won.
We know that the coronavirus is here to stay but, as Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary, I don’t want to see our country in lockdown ever again.
A visit to a primary school in my constituency this week was a reminder that lockdowns come at a great cost.
Children spent 155 days out of school on average over the past couple of years, but the impact on their learning, their wellbeing and their life chances is immeasurable.
Entrepreneurs who have spent years building up their businesses have seen them collapse, while others have made enormous sacrifices just to survive.
Workers have lost their jobs.
All through no fault of their own.
I still haven’t forgiven the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, for leaving so many self-employed people excluded from any support whatsoever, while carelessly handing billions in Covid support to fraudsters.
There is plenty of evidence that shutting us off from our colleagues, friends and family has taken its toll on our mental health and wellbeing.
Feelings of loss and loneliness are inevitable when much of what makes life worth living is taken away.
That’s why when Keir Starmer spoke about shifting the focus on healthcare to prevention as well as cure yesterday, he pledged that Labour would guarantee mental health support within a month to all who need it.
We need to learn to live with Covid.
Worth reading in full.
Discussion
Comments
This week across the site:
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to the Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
“There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth”(even if he is a Labour MP, 22 months too late, after 3 useless lockdoowns and all the financial, educational, social and mental damage he and his kind have done to the whole world. Let’s hope we get some straight speaking and truth from the proposed public enquiry(but I’m not holding my breath- it will be a fudge, as always)
He said: ‘Without Labour, sensible Plan B measures wouldn’t have happened and we wouldn’t be enjoying the new year without the threat of new restrictions.’
IOW, he claims that the vaccine assport has caused the decline in cases and wrongly takes credit for the government not imposing stricter measures before the new year despite these were demanded by experts, union leaders and Labour MPs alike. That’s not a sinner who repents. Rather someone who realized he had put his money on the wrong horse this time, who’s now in damage control mode and hopes his plans will work out better next time.
And then comes, of course
Our best defence against new variants is to play our part in vaccinating the world. None of us are safe until all of us are safe.
Let these guys come into control of anything, find yourself with a raft of sensible measures to limit the spread of the virus, say vaccine assports extended to hospitality and shops considered to sell luxuries like socks and underpants, mandatory masking everywhere, hospitality curfews etc the next morning. There’s an international cause driven by the WHO (which is – in turn – driven by China and… Read more »
so labour has seen the signs on the wall and has decided to change position before they disappear into oblivion completely.
now they are trying to come out of this as the champions of reason?
the sanctimonious hypocrites!
And the churches have supported this decimation of society all the way through. They have not lifted a finger or voice against it.
So, does Wes Streeting agree that we should never have locked down in the first place?
Does he agree that all the other restrictions were provably a total waste of time and money?
Does he now agree that focused protection and early stage treatment were the correct responses, and would have achieved a far far better outcome?
Does he now agree that effectively shutting the NHS was a terrible mistake?
Here’s a longer list of govt beliefs that he may find were erroneous…
• That masks are effective
• That people who are asymptomatic can transmit
• That asymptomatic transmission was a pandemic driver
• That the vaccines are “safe and effective”
• That it was just “3 weeks to flatten the curve”
• That the NHS was far more important to ‘save’ than the people it treats
• That you just needed 1 vaccine shot
• That you only needed a 2nd vaccine shot
• That you only now need to have a ‘booster’ (and all the subsequent ones no doubt)
• That the existing vaccines (boosters) are effective against Omicron
• That there was no conflict of interest between Big Pharma, government advisers and uber organisations and individuals such… Read more »
These past two years Labour have been cheerleaders for lockdown, circuit breakers, mask wearing and test and trace. All futile measures which did nothing to stem the spread of the virus and led only to spiralling debt, bankruptcies and unemployment especially among the groups that Labour claim to represent. Would more jobs have been saved if Labour had been in power? I do not think so. No credit goes to any of the political parties though. As Churchill put it, they have sown the wind, soon they will reap the whirlwind.
Blimey!!
This country better abandon all mandates. If they don’t the Uk is next to fall.
Perhaps they’ve noticed that it’s membership is falling; I wonder why.
So the “I was a partisan too” begins.
Who needs lockdowns when you can have “preventative healthcare” delivered at the point of a needle via endless gene therapy treatments?
Anyone who imagines Sir Keir Starmer would be any less a globalist minion than jerk-off Johnson needs only riffle through a list of the latter’s Trilateral Commission buddies.
Sorry for the long essay I hope people wake up everyday to the evil that has happened never in my life have a tyrannical Government been so evil they have killed so many with their communist lockdowns and thousands in carehomes of depression not letting healthy old people have vitamin D or still see their relatives, Labour Conservative Lib Dem I doubt much better the whole political system needs to be overthrown so Conservative do not get in ever again or Labour , we need Reform UK in power .
If only there was a clear leader in opposition to YouTube let alone a mainstream political party to campaign for us against all of those currently representing us in Westminster.
Sorry thanks for the comment I made a mistake I am not trolling just or more less wanted to write down what I thought of this shitshow no more polite words to say some confession but I will post not too late again or not too long .
I agree I just hate the whole mask , hand sanitizer thing it ruins every human experience that is part of the plan I suppose it is pure Fucking Evil, I wore a mask the first six days then said no more dehumanising myself it felt stuffy and uncomfortable So I wore a thin scarf from Primark over my face, then got a Lanyard from Etsy, saying I have a hidden disability, I am Exempt now I go on buses trains barefaced without a Lanyard. I just say I am Exempt no one has questioned me till in Brixton at a market pop up recently Where’s your mask I said I am Exempt it was fine no more questions asked I have never been questioned I do not know why but I have no problems regarding not wearing one in shops cafes supermarkets.
I do think Perspex screens are the worst they just make it seem like you should stand back or not get too close to stuff I mean I still have them in my local Starbucks, I know I just love their vegan food and their coffee is one of my favourites not too sweet a oat mocha… Read more »
Why do you post this thoughtful and interesting commentary here where nobody will read it?
Far better to put it at the start of Monday am Roundup which has just been published where it will receive much more well deserved attention and, perhaps, some responses.
Not too late to copy it in there now.
1970s-80s Crouch Ender before it got ruined by yuppies. Pre-Starbucks even !
Why I mean I am sorry my nails are long I thought anyone decent anti lockdown human could post I do not always see perfect grammar or full stops reading the posts, never mind . I am very anti lockdown and anti masks I will stick to Conservative Woman I was making my point it ending up too long I was speaking about how masks and hand sanitizers ruin shopping going out doing normal things with friends having coffee in cafes for instance sorry I do not like looking stupid , I think it might need improving the punctuality but this is not the Daily Telegraph I do forgot to mention I hate going to places QR codes on the tables most businesses still do near me and is have been to 9 anti lockdown mandatory vaccine demos I am allowed to post here , I am not a troll I have read PseudoPandemic.
Labour non-entities trailing along in disappointment – who cares?
Labour MPs beyond contempt. Any more Chinese spies discovered waving money at them yet?
( I hop e the Chinese charge extra for their ‘honey traps lookin at the stste of Labour Males!
Get lost, Comrade Streeting, you are saying this because you’ve been rumbled, it’s obvious you know lockdown was for show.
The oily Streeting character did add a caveat that he would vote for other restrictions needed ( whenever)…. they can go right to the edge of locking down regionally (as in 2020) or nationally. What is this rowing back for on both sides all of a sudden? It jars, it seems out of synch with policy just a month ago. What is afoot behind the scenes…this multi – Act tragedy is not over.
Trying to be all things to all men, probably.
How dare Wes Streeting take this stance. Starker and Labour MPs voted for the maintenance of restrictions recently, at every turn Starter clamoured for tighter and more Draconian restrictions including school closures. Throughout he has been in thrall to witless and unbalanced. How dare he now raise the issue of small businesses that have gone under because of the restrictions. He never opposed anything in Parliament. It was Tory MPs who raised these issues. Starter needs to go.
If science can’t be questioned it’s not science anymore. It’s propaganda. They want to rip on people for taking Ivermectin. I researched and saw the evidence on the internet. Research papers are on the internet for those who wants to see. Top respected world doctors are being under defamation by MSM and vaccine manufacturers. I won’t back down recommeding IVM. You can get yours by visiting https://ivmpharmacy.com
Once the most vulnerable cohorts had been jabbed, by their own (prior) rationale for any sort of social restrictions, masking, travel bans, etc. was totally gone.
But that didn’t stop them from reimposing masks, etc.
The problem, as I see it today, is that so many people seem voluntarily to be wearing masks, that it seems highly likely as if they will continue to be required, even beyond the January 26th date.
This is just my opinion, but Boris Johnson really has only himself to blame for the issue about the Number 10 drinking party. If we here in England had been happily and freely going about our business since June, then I think a lot of the anger at BoJo’s apparent hypocrisy would have never materialised.
Lastly: Again my opinion, but I don’t think anyone should expect that a Johnson replacement, from any party, is going to be any more easy handed when it comes to covid restrictions.
Boris Johnson really has only himself to blame for the issue about the Number 10 drinking party.
This is from almost 2 years ago (2020). Don’t you think it’s a bit strange that this makes headlines now, ie, at a time when most of Europe is under draconian corona restrictions Johnson kept England free of, with the so-called devolved governments, the so-called opposition and the so-called experts all yearning for that to be changed?
Johnson hasn’t been following the The pandemic could be ended in 2022 if 70% of the population of the world had been vaccinated WHO script, which essentially calls for 2022 to be exactly like 2021 to be exactly like March – December 2020. IMO, this is a pretty transparent attempt to get rid of him. His would-be successors would need to make a case with the members of Tory party in order to get the post, not with the general public. I think it’s not unreasonable to assume that a Horrors of the pandemic and what I want to do about it! strategy may succeed there. After all, that’s mostly economically inactive people belonging to so-called vulnerable groups.
Yes, if Kim Jong-Johnson hadn’t imposed the rules, he would never have broken them.
Their idea of learning to live with the virus is keep mass testing the healthy and vaccinate the world as nobody is safe until everybody is safe, IOW, they may be backpedalling on lockdowns (obviously, they’re not backpedalling on masks — the unions still want them forced onto everyone) at the moment, but their core standpoint is still This most horrible virus is going to kill everyone unless we …
Labour is not a party, especially not a party concerned with the well-being of the working class and the less well-off, it’s a gang of heart-, conscience- and compassionless monsters whose only goal is to turn the UK into a mirror image of China.
It’s not a ‘surrender’. It’s a continuation – tacking to mimic the shifts that the Tories are having to make, which has been the policy all along.
‘What a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive’, fits nicely with the covid agenda
That’s right, pretend you haven’t been told all of this for two full years.
The same way we have learned to live with fat?
Save RNHS! Compulsory dieting! It’s for the good of society!
Glorifying Obesity And Increasing Health Risks.
Labour are shameless opportunists. They have a cheek claiming they’re against lockdowns, as they own lockdown as much as the Tories having voted in favour of every restriction of our liberties, never raising any objections. In fact they were always calling for faster, harder, and longer lockdowns, so (as we see in Wales) they would have locked down more.
Depressing to see the old mantra “nobody’s safe til everyone’s safe” and “we’ve got to vaccinate the world”. And to see that Wes Streeting’s comments go just far enough to try and make political capital but nowhere near acknowledging that we now need to go back to proper normal. However, I think Labour are starting to think that the tide is turning, more and more people are beginning to question the madness, and they hope to be the party that appears to preside over a change that would have happened anyway
How dare the little shit start pretending he’s anti-lockdown now. He’s up to his neck in lockdown, along with all the rest of his party, damn their blood.
What a sly, sanctimonious prig – just like Starmer! This is just semantics about “lockdown”. Their way to keep us out of lockdown will be masks, jabs, passes, and all the rest of the paraphernalia just short of something called “lockdown”.
Do us a favour Streeting – just fuck off and leave us alone!
Well Liebour party…what a shower of shite you are.
Now that your trying to curry favour with an indoctrinated populace that’s starting to waken to the fact that big government is a pernicious cancer! Why not do the right thing and call for the immediate repeal of the Coronavirus Act!
Whatever the government decided – masking – vaxxing – lockdown – Labour, just like their MSM comrades, just whined about not doing it sooner or harsher.
Absolute hypocrisy.
Walk the talk and repeal every emergency power 0900 Monday morning.
Blatantly opportunist.
Just because the writing may be on the wall for Boris and his henchmen does not mean the sham opposition can muscle in on a flimsy promise.
The classic lyric from Bob Dylan’s ‘Positively 4th Street’ comes to mind:-
“You’ve got a lot of nerve – you just want to be on the side that’s winning”
And our side is winning – but there’s a long, hard road yet to travel.
as we all know.