There is nothing wrong with questioning the mighty cost of the lockdowns, but we can’t let hardline libertarians rewrite Britain’s pandemic history
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hat number will stay fixed for ever in public memory: 23,000 people died because Boris Johnson resisted locking the country down in time. As Covid swept in, and with horrific images of Italian temporary morgues in tents, he went on holiday and took no calls. With the NHS bracing to be “overwhelmed” by the virus, he rode his new motorbike, walked his dog and hosted friends at Chevening.
Nothing is surprising about that: he was ejected from Downing Street and later stepped down as an MP largely for partying and lying to parliament about it. Everyone knew he was a self-aggrandising fantasist with a “toxic and chaotic culture” around him. But this is not just about one narcissistic politician. It’s about his entire rightwing coterie of libertarians and their lethally dominant creed in the UK media.
They have a long history of rejecting things that save lives – seatbelts, speed limits, smoking restrictions, sugar taxes, vaccination, benefits, sewers, clean air, the NHS itself and, of course, stopping climate breakdown. Recall that during the 1980s and 1990s, the Sunday Times under the editorship of Andrew Neil promoted the strangest gay plague theory, publishing pieces suggesting that Aids wasn’t caused by HIV, and that it was almost impossible for heterosexual people to contract it. (Neil has said he regrets certain aspects of the paper’s coverage, but does not take personal responsibility for it.)
