Not the Prime Minister Voters Voted For
Earlier this week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed both the House of Commons and the nation in a TV broadcast, attempting to invoke some form of Churchillian spirit in the so-called ‘war’ on COVID-19.
As we have consistently said on KJM Today, the government, led by this Prime Minister, mainstream media and almost everybody else has consistently misused the word ‘coronavirus’ to describe the panicdemic sweeping the world. This is patently wrong and at best is misleading. At worst it is a lie. A reminder:
There are number of coronaviruses including three strains of the common cold. One of these is SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19. None however, by themselves, are fatal. What can be fatal are the other conditions to which any coronavirus can lead. People who catch an ordinary cold can develop pneumonia, which can kill if left untreated. There are any number of other health conditions that can also be fatal. But coronaviruses aren’t among them and neither – by itself – is COVID-19.
Yet the vast majority still cannot access medical assistance for anything – as we have already said, the NHS remains effectively closed to everybody, including cancer victims and others needing life-saving help. And in case anybody had forgotten, there is not now, nor has there ever been a ‘cure’, or a truly effective and guaranteed vaccine for the common cold or any other coronavirus. There will not be one for COVID-19 either. Yes, vaccines can help but they are not the magical cure-all solution and never will be. That is why current UK government policies are pointless and do nothing to stop what is, we will concede, a contagious condition like COVID-19.
But we will not learn to live with it, nor will be we build our immune systems to it, by hiding ourselves away, by covering our faces or by locking down and bankrupting the country. And we will not succeed by allowing our freedoms to be removed. As Benjamin Franklin once said: “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
And that includes elected MPs and those who become members of a government. The mask law is wrong, as is the so-called Coronavirus Act, as are the removal of freedoms undertaken by this government. And that includes the invasive ‘Track and Trace’ system.
As the Daily Telegraph’s Ross Clark points out: “Who in their right mind would want to download Matt Hancock’s track and trace app…My reluctance is not just down to the government’s lousy record with technology – to judge by the booking system for Covid tests it won’t be long before baffled Aberdonians [in Scotland] who haven’t left their city for six months start getting texts telling them to self-isolate on the grounds that the system tracked them standing next to someone in a bar in Putney [London]. But then he is threatening to use the full weight of the law to punish people who lapse after having been told by the app to self-isolate. One little walk, one little trip down the park and that app will presumably be capable of catching you out and springing you with a fine. It is rather as if the Stasi had asked people to volunteer to be spied upon.”
Clark goes on: “...the health secretary – whose family business is in software - seems to think that all the world’s problems can be solved by our smartphones in some way.”
Perhaps the ‘family business’ may explain Mr Hancock’s enthusiasm – remember he waxed lyrical about having more GP appointments carried out by digital means before the onset of COVID-19. But there is more to it than that – track and trace will, as Ross Clark implies, lead to its greater use, adversely affecting everybody’s ability to lead lives unrestrained by the power of the state.
Boris Johnson was elected on the back of his reputation as a true believer in the opposite of state power. We forgave and overlooked his flaws. But his government is not what we voted for. We voted for freedom, not repression. The Prime Minister still has the chance to restore his reputation as a libertarian and to pull back from the current path. He still has the opportunity to remove questionable scientific opinion (and that is all it is – opinion, not fact). He still has over three years to listen to people and restore our freedom to make up our own mind. He can still be the Boris Johnson so many people voted for.