Quotulatiousness

March 25, 2021

Boris wanted to be a new Churchill, but instead is shaping up as a cut-rate Cromwell

Filed under: Britain, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Bella Wallersteiner on the vast difference between Boris Johnson’s hopes for his premiership and the actual role he’s been playing:

A year has passed since the British public accepted lockdown as the best way to combat the spread of the novel coronavirus, yet we are still living under the strictures of the Coronavirus Act.

In the name of virus protection, we have experienced a level of authoritarianism not seen in this country since the time of Oliver Cromwell – restrictions on freedom of movement, forced closure of businesses, and prohibitions on weddings and funerals have challenged many of our most cherished beliefs about the limits of government power, while the ban on large gatherings means we cannot even legally protest them.

Today, as we mark the anniversary of the first lockdown, we would do well to reflect on just how compliant we have become to what were intended to be “emergency” powers.

Cheery platitudes have ranged from “we’re all in this together” and “we’ll send this virus packing” to the hopelessly inaccurate “it will all be over by Christmas”. But history tells us that governments tend to hold on to additional powers far longer than is necessary.

The Defence of the Realm Act of 1914, for example, granted the government wide-ranging powers in the name of public safety, including heavy censorship of the press and the introduction of rationing. Pub licensing laws remained in place for decades, only relaxed in November 2005.

The Second World War brought The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939 which ceded immense regulatory powers to the government, including provisions “for the apprehension, trial and punishment of persons offending against the Regulations and for the detentions of persons whose detention appears to be expedient to the Secretary of State in the interest of public safety or the defence of the realm”. The Act was finally repealed on 25th March 1959, but the last of the Defence Regulations (which included the maintenance of public order) was not lifted until 31st December 1964.

March 11, 2021

Boris as a latter-day Prince Rupert of the Rhine?

Filed under: Britain, History, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In The Critic, Graham Stewart portrays the British Prime Minister and Sir Keir Starmer, leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition in the House of Commons as English Civil War combatants:

King Charles I and Prince Rupert before the Battle of Naseby 14th June 1645 during the English Civil War.
19th century artist unknown, from Wikimedia Commons.

Prime Minister’s Questions distils into a single gladiatorial contest what thousands of enthusiasts in a charitable organisation called the Sealed Knot perform across the country most summers – namely the re-enactment of battles of the English Civil War.

Unsmiling, relentless, serious to the point of bringing despair to his foot-soldiers as much as his opponents, Sir Keir Starmer is a Roundhead general for our times. Nobody believes better than he that virtue and providence are his shield. This faith sustains him whilst the fickle and ungodly court of popular opinion fails to rally to his command. He believes that holding firm, doggedly probing the enemy with the long pike and short-sword will eventually prevail, no matter how long the march to victory may prove.

Facing him, the generous girth of the nation’s leading Cavalier occupies his command-post. His long, uncut hair resembling a thatch on a half-timbered cottage, Boris Johnson lands at the despatch box as if he has just fallen from his place of concealment in an oak tree, bleary and under-prepared, but confident in assertion. It might be said of him, as Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton once said of the parliamentary style of a previous Tory prime minister, Lord Derby, that Johnson is “irregularly great, frank, haughty, bold – the Rupert of debate.”

Today was one of those occasions when the prime minister did indeed resemble the dashing Prince Rupert of the Rhine. Unfortunately, it was the moment during the decisive civil war battle of Naseby when the great Cavalier commander charged his horsemen through the parliamentary lines with such momentum that they kept going and ended up spending the rest of the day plundering a distant baggage train rather than returning to determine the result of the battle.

January 17, 2021

Hector Drummond on Boris “Cane-Toad” Johnson

Filed under: Australia, Britain, Environment, Government, History — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

As a teaser to attract new subscribers to his Patron and SubscribeStar pages, Hector Drummond shared this piece on the ecological disaster of Australia’s 1930s cane-toad importation and the similar political disaster of Boris Johnson in Britain:

In the 1930s Queensland farmers were facing trouble with large numbers of cane beetles eating the sugar crops that were an important part of the state’s economy. So the Bureau of Sugar Experiment Stations came up with a cunning plan. They would import some cane toads (a native of middle and south America), because cane toads ate cane beetles. This was sure to solve the problem in a trice. One-hundred and two cane toads were duly imported into the state, from Hawaii as it happened, to do the job.

Unfortunately this soon became a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease. In fact it wasn’t any cure at all because the cane toads didn’t bother much with the cane beetles, and instead ate everything else they could wrap their tongues around. The other thing they did was multiply at an explosive rate. These days there are estimated to be 200 million cane toads in Australia, mainly in Queensland, and they cause havoc with the native fauna, not least because they have nasty poison-producing glands on the back of their head which the native animals have no naturally-evolved defence against. Curious pet dogs who mess about with a toad can die.

In 2019 Britain was facing its own crisis. It had become obvious to half the country that Theresa May’s Conservative government was deliberately trying to prevent Brexit from happening. As the other parties were even worse, the only hope for a real Brexit to take place was if a new pro-Brexit leadership in the Conservative party could be installed. After a titanic struggle, this finally happened, and Alexander “Boris” Johnson became the new leader, with Michael Gove and advisor Dominic Cummings at his side.

Unfortunately Johnson has proven to be Britain’s own version of the cane toad, a cure that is vastly worse than the disease. Johnson, at least, proved to be more able than his Australian counterpart at doing the job that was required of him. Whereas the Australian toad was about as interested in cane beetles as Olly Robbins was in getting the UK out of the EU, Johnson at least gave us a middling type of Brexit which, as fudged as it was, was at least far better than anything any of his fellow MPs could have got.

But in terms of being worse than the disease, Cane-Toad Johnson has proven to be far, far more destructive than the cane toad ever was. The cane toad, after all, is merely an ecological pest, whereas Johnson has proved to be a dangerous menace to the country’s liberty, prosperity and health. The poison from his glands has leached into our very life. We have become like domestic dogs who have been forced to lick them every day.

December 21, 2020

Boris “Ebenezer” Johnson cancels Christmas

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Science — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

What is it with British PMs and political U-turns?

So Christmas is cancelled. The neo-Cromwellian edict has been issued. The thing that Boris Johnson said would be “inhuman” just a few days ago has now been done. For the first time in centuries people in vast swathes of England – London and the South East – will be forbidden by law from celebrating Christmas together. The government’s promise of five days’ relief from the stifling, atomising, soul-destroying lockdown of everyday life has been snatched away from us. It’s too risky, the experts say; the disease will spread and cause great harm. You know what else will cause great harm? This cruel, disproportionate cancellation of Christmas; this decree against family festivities and human engagement.

This evening Boris Johnson executed the most disturbing u-turn of his premiership: he scrapped the planned relaxation of lockdown rules for Christmas. He commanded that London and the South East will be propelled into Tier 4, yet another Kafkaesque category of authoritarianism dreamt up by our increasingly technocratic rulers. This means no household mixing, including on Christmas Day. That’s millions of planned get-togethers, family celebrations, cancelled with the swipe of a bureaucrat’s pen. Other areas outside of London are luckier: Boris has graciously granted them one day off from the lockdown rules, on Christmas Day, when they may mix with people from other households. They will no doubt give praise to their benevolent protectors for such festive if fleeting charity.

There is much that is disturbing about Boris’s decree. It is being justified on the basis that a new strain of Covid-19 is spreading in the South East and seems more contagious than earlier strains. That is certainly something we should be aware of. But Boris also declared that there is no evidence that this new strain has led to “increased mortality”. So what is going on here? Surely before enacting the drastic, almost unprecedented measure of preventing millions of people from celebrating Christmas together the government should offer up clearer evidence of the significant social harms that would allegedly spring from such celebrations? The political and media elites go on and on about “evidence-based policy”, except when it comes to locking people down. Then it’s all “Yeh, go ahead, better safe than sorry”.

October 6, 2020

Has Boris had his fifteen minutes yet?

Filed under: Britain, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

James Delingpole is very much of the opinion that Boris Johnson’s time is almost up and is starting to consider who would replace him as British PM:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

It’s no longer a question of “if” but when the ailing, flailing UK Prime Minister crashes and burns. The only remaining questions now are “How much more damage is the buffoon going to inflict before he retires, gracefully or otherwise?” and “Who is going to pick up the pieces when he is gone?”

With the second question, my money is on Chancellor Rishi Sunak. Sure he’s a young-ish (40), fairly untested, partly unknown quantity and, perhaps worse, he’s a graduate of Goldman Sachs. On the other hand, with no General Election likely till 2024, it’s a simple fact that whoever replaces Johnson as prime minister will almost certainly be a member of his current cabinet. Sunak scores highly because he’s arguably the senior minister least tainted by Johnson’s spectacular mishandling of Chinese coronavirus.

Unlike Johnson, his preening Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove, Sunak is not one of the so-called “Doves” advocating for ever more stringent measures — lockdowns, masks, curfews, quarantines, a mooted cancellation of Christmas.

Rather, he is the leader of the Hawk faction arguing that it is long since time to prioritise the economy.

Dominic Cummings advising Boris Johnson, probably

True, opinion polls currently favour the Doves — aka the Bedwetters. The British public has so far proved remarkably amenable to having its freedoms snatched away in order to keep it “safe” from coronavirus. Polls continue to suggest that the vast majority of British people want more authoritarian measures, not fewer, in order to deal with the crisis. And Dominic Cummings — the sinister, opinion-poll-driven schemer who, as Johnson’s chief advisor has been controlling the Prime Minister much in the manner of Wormtongue controlling King Théoden in Lord of the Rings — has been more than happy to oblige.

But it would be a massive error to assume that this state of affairs will last.

October 3, 2020

“The Tory party, desirous of a fat majority, will sell the country out over Europe”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, Gawain Towler sees a major opportunity for Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party:

The simple fact is that this Government had the opportunity to do something about our negotiations with the EU in the months after the election. They had a whopping great majority and the goodwill of the nation. Boris had used his ebullience to present the country with a vision that with one bound we would be free, the deal was oven-ready, he was going to get Brexit done. Yes, he had inherited the Withdrawal Agreement, a deeply duff deal, from his predecessor. His resignation as Foreign Secretary over it gave us the confidence that he recognised it as such. And yet on the 25 January, a mere month after his triumphant election victory, he signed that same duff deal and condemned the country to this slow lingering betrayal. It was not necessary to do so, he could have pointed to the election, the vote, and with the support of the country gone to Brussels and made it clear he would not sign. This he signally failed to do.

So here we are again, with the EU making threatening noises, taking legal action with leaks coming out of Berlin and London suggesting that the UK is prepared to make more concessions. A No 10 spokesman confirmed that “The PM will be speaking to President von der Leyen tomorrow afternoon to take stock of negotiations and discuss next steps.”

According to Bruno Waterfield of The Times, “This is seen broadly as a good sign – if, as expected, the British prime minister is ready to signal a bit more give on fish, state aid and subsidy control”.

Note the “more give” – there has already been a lot of giving.

The thing is that Boris is beset with problems, with the Remain lobby, both on his own green benchers and elsewhere; yet again digging up dire predictions of economic meltdown, the CBI taking the lead. The ERG group of Tory sceptics have been oddly quiet, focusing more on Covid-19 than on the clear danger of a failed Brexit. There is no pressure on one side, and a great tidal wave of it pushing him to make a deal at any cost.

Then there is the electoral arithmetic. This shouldn’t matter so far out from an election, but the rumours of Boris’s political demise and the currents swirling around the Chancellor make Labour’s slight lead in the polls a matter of concern. Labour is beginning to solidify after years of infighting, but it is not cutting into Tory support.

That is where Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party come in.

September 24, 2020

I thought we were supposed to speak well of the (politically) dead

Filed under: Books, Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In The Critic, Nigel Jones examines the soon-to-be-published “political tittle-tattle” of the wife of an MP and junior cabinet minister during David “Dave” Cameron’s premiership:

For anyone who has been holidaying under a rock for the past fortnight and may have missed the furore, I should explain that Lady Swire, daughter of Mrs Thatcher’s former Defence Secretary Sir John Nott, is the wife of ex-Tory MP Sir Hugo Swire, an Old Etonian chum of David Cameron, who somehow failed to be promoted beyond the ranks of junior ministers during his pal’s Premiership, but remained a close confidante and boon holiday companion to the PM. Lady Swire herself is half-Slovenian, and though brought up in the bosom of the Tory establishment, may not be entirely attuned to the evasions, hypocrisy and double standards that make up British political life, which makes her book all the more enjoyable.

Throughout Dave’s inglorious time in office, Lady Swire kept a secret diary detailing intimacies of conversation, banter and badinage, and revealing insights that give – shall we say – a not wholly flattering picture of the ruling Tory clique at play during their most unguarded moments. The bad behaviour, petty jealousies and embarrassing remarks of Dave, George, Boris and Michael and their wives are set down in all their toe-curling cringeworthiness.

The diaries are to be published next week but have been serialised in The Times and reviewed and widely commented on in the rest of the media. The two main targets – the duopoly of Cameron and Osborne – have already expressed their displeasure at the revelations. But all the tut-tutting disapproval of Lady Swire’s profitable indiscretions misses the main point: there is nothing that the British public relishes and enjoys more than an exposé of their leaders with their dignity gone and their metaphorical trousers down.

Moreover, gossip and tittle tattle as set down in diaries often tells us more about the true nature of politics and the motivations and personalities of politicians than a thousand self-serving pompous political memoirs or dull works of dry political analysis. What we really want is gossip – the gamier the better – and all the inconvenient truths our rulers rather we didn’t know.

Very often what we learn from particular epochs of history are the telling anecdotes and juicy titbits revealed by diarists rather than the respectability that the statesmen themselves wish to present and be remembered for. Our picture of the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, for example, and the very merry court of Charles II, along with the apocalyptic disasters of fire and plague that followed comes largely from the indiscreet journals of Samuel Pepys, Daniel Defoe, and John Evelyn.

September 12, 2020

“‘Lovable’ Boris Johnson is currently presiding over the biggest assault on the British people’s freedoms since Cromwell’s Commonwealth”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

James Delingpole has had it with Boris Johnson’s proto-fascist approach to dealing with the Wuhan Coronavirus:

Boris Johnson on 15 February 2018.
Photo by Velislav Nikolov via Wikimedia Commons.

… ask yourself how you’d have felt a year ago — or even six months ago — if you’d been told a British government was planning to institute a 10pm curfew, ban gatherings of more than six people, impose daily immunity tests before you were allowed to go about your business, employ Stasi-like volunteer “marshals” to ensure public compliance and warning that it might even have to cancel Christmas?

Your first reaction would have been: “Impossible. This is the kind of thing that excitable foreigners engage in. Never the phlegmatic, rational British – and certainly, never, ever, EVER so long as there’s a Conservative government in power.”

Your second reaction would have been: “Oh, I get it. It’s a joke, right? You’re telling me the plotline of some new dystopian graphic novel on the lines of Watchmen currently being adapted for Amazon Prime or Netflix, yeah?”

I still can’t quite believe it myself.

[…]

It’s possible that Boris’’s brush with death earlier this year — his excessive weight, unfortunately, put him in the Covid at-risk category — may have stolen his mojo and left him a dried-out husk entirely unfit for public office.

Or it may just be that Boris was always going to be exposed for the chancer he is, sooner or later: all that was needed was the crisis which would cruelly reveal just how useless he is — at least where statesmanship is concerned — at rising to the occasion.

Either way, “lovable” Boris Johnson is currently presiding over the biggest assault on the British people’s freedoms since Cromwell’s Commonwealth (which was the last occasion on which Christmas was more or less banned).

But maybe the most shocking part of the tyranny Boris is currently imposing on Britain is the lack of justification for it.

If Covid-19 really were a version, say, of the Black Death — which wiped out 60 per cent of Europe’s population — most of us would probably agree to sacrifice our freedoms in order to reduce the risk of dying in agony with pustulous buboes while vomiting black blood. Back in the 14th century, there might possibly have been a place for a Boris Johnson, or a Matt Hancock or a Chris Whitty — and if only someone could build a time machine, sharpish, maybe we could facilitate this.

And if that wasn’t enough, check out this graph!

August 29, 2020

Recreating British Railways?

Filed under: Britain, Business, Economics, Government, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Adrian Quine looks at the long-term results of the partial privatization of British Railways, and the current British government’s options to address some of the problems:

Wikimedia caption – “This is the Bring Back British Rail, a reverse image of the old BR logo, (now used by the TOC’s) to show we are heading the wrong way with Rail in the UK”

If there is one thing free marketeers and large state socialists agree on, it would be the terrible state/private hybrid ownership structure of our railways currently supported by the government. While large state socialists won’t be happy until the private sector is squeezed out of the system, market liberals view the Conservative government’s actions as creeping renationalisation.

The private-sector entrepreneurs that built many of Britain’s railways in the 19th century had – through a process of market discovery – settled on vertical integration, with the same firm owning the track and operating the trains. But, when railways were returned to private sector in the late 1990s, the government created one national infrastructure company (Railtrack), 25 train-operating companies (TOCs), 3 freight operating companies, 3 rolling-stock leasing companies, 13 infrastructure service companies and other support organisations. The Office of Passenger Rail Franchising was tasked with selling franchises to the TOCs, while the Office of the Rail Regulator (ORR) regulated the infrastructure. This artificial and fragmented structure was designed to give the impression of competition.

Despite these constraints, in the early days of John Major’s flawed privatisation some of the more enterprising private train operators managed to bring innovation to the sector, including improved marketing and very low-cost “yield managed” advance fares. Where allowed, competition between different operators brought improved customer service, additional direct trains and lower ticket prices. However, the flaws in the initial privatisation soon became apparent with failed franchises leading to increased government intervention and renationalisation by subsequent governments.

While attempts were made to downplay the significance of July’s decision by the Office of National Statistics to put train operators on the public balance sheet, it is in fact only the latest in a worrying string of signals about the direction in which the railway and Boris Johnson’s government are headed. In June, the transport secretary Grant Shapps announced to a parliamentary select committee plans to introduce concessions across the rail network. Private operators will simply be paid a set fee to provide a basic service – another nail in the coffin for commercial investment or innovation.

Attention is now turning to what the government will do when the current “Emergency Measures Agreements” – hastily put in place to ensure trains kept running when passenger numbers nosedived by 95% as lockdown began – comes to an end in September.

An InterCity 125 power car in British Rail livery at Manchester Piccadilly in October 1976.
Photo by Dave Hitchborne via Wikimedia Commons.

QotD: Britain’s most sacred of sacred cows

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

If it is possible to kowtow to a sacred cow, that is exactly what Boris Johnson did on leaving St Thomas’ Hospital after he had been treated there for Covid-19. The NHS, he said, was “Britain’s greatest national asset”, as if, had he fallen ill in any country other than Britain, he would not have been treated so well or simply left to die.

This was an unintended insult to the doctors and nurses of other countries, as if in their benighted lands without the NHS they did not work with skill or devotion. The NHS is neither necessary nor sufficient for medical and nursing staff to show devotion. The parents of a well-taught schoolchild do not thank the Ministry of Education.

No doubt the prime minister’s praise of the NHS was politically shrewd — one casts no doubt on the perfection of the Koran in Mecca — but in the long run such praise does no service to the nation, which at some time or other ought to face up to the fact that its healthcare system is at best mediocre by comparison with that of other countries at a similar level of economic development, and that being ill and seeking treatment is a more unpleasant experience in Britain than in it is many civilised countries.

Untold numbers of people receive excellent care under the NHS. One must neither exaggerate nor catastrophise. But there is another side to the coin as well, and it is surely not a coincidence that no one in Europe would choose Britain as their country of medical care, rather the reverse. If a German were to say, “For God’s sake, get me to the NHS!”, a psychiatrist would be called.

Theodore Dalrymple, “Empire of conformists”, The Critic, 2020-04-29.

June 30, 2020

“It all counts for nothing, because the Conservatives themselves are useless”

Filed under: Britain, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Most Canadians, reading that headline, will assume that Sean Gabb is talking about the Conservative Party of Canada (and he’d be 100% correct in that case), but he’s actually talking about Britain’s equally useless equivalent under Boris Johnson:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

According to The Daily Mail, Madeline Odent is the Curator of the Royston Museum in Hertfordshire. This museum is funded by Royston Council. In the past few days, Mrs Odent has taken to Twitter, giving expert advice on how to use household chemicals to cause irreparable harm to statues she dislikes.

It is, she says, “extremely difficult” to remove the chemicals once they have been applied. She adds that “it can be done, but the chemical needed is super carcinogenic, so it rarely is.” Again, she says: “We haven’t found a way to restore artefacts that this happens to.” Her last reported tweet features a picture of Winton Churchill’s defaced statue in Parliament Square, and says: “Stay tuned for our next edition, where we’ll be talking about marble memorials of racists.”

The newspaper and various people are calling for the woman to be sacked. It is, I allow, surprising for someone to hold a job that involves conserving the past, and then to advise an insurrectionary mob on how to destroy the past. This being said, and assuming the story is substantially true, Mrs Odent is less to be blamed for giving her advice than those who employed her as an expert on conservation and its opposite.

We have had a Conservative Government since 2010. We have had a Conservative Government with a working majority since 2015. For the past six months, we have had a Conservative Government with a crushing majority. It all counts for nothing, because the Conservatives themselves are useless.

Political power is not purely, nor mainly, a matter of being able to make laws. It is far more a matter of choosing reliable servants. Before 1997, we could suppose, within reason, that these servants were politically neutral. They often had their own agenda. They could use their status as experts to influence, and sometimes to frustrate, laws and policies with which they disagreed. But there were not self-consciously an order of people devoted to a transformative revolution. The Blair Government broke with convention by stuffing the public sector with its own creatures, loyal only to itself. This is to be deplored. On the other hand, the Blair Government did have a mandate for sweeping change, and it is reasonable that it should have given preference to employing those who could be trusted to further both the letter and spirit of this mandate. The Conservatives have had enough time to make the public sector into at least an obedient servant of those the people keep electing. Instead of this, they have spent this time employing and promoting people whom Tony Blair would have sacked on the spot as malicious lunatics.

May 8, 2020

The Wuhan Coronavirus lockdown – “perhaps the worst policy mistake ever committed by Western governments during peacetime”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Toby Young on the fall of “Professor Lockdown”, the former top advisor to the British government on the response to the Wuhan Coronavirus epidemic:

The reason for looking into the political affiliations of the scientists and experts who’ve been advising governments across the world during this crisis is that it may throw some light on why those governments have made such poor policy decisions. Will the vast majority of those advisers turn out to be left-of-centre, like Professor Ferguson? I’m 99% sure of it, and I think that will help us to understand what’s happened.

I don’t mean they’ve deliberately given right-of-centre governments poor advice in the hope of wrecking their economies for nefarious party political reasons or because they’re members of Extinction Rebellion and want to destroy capitalism. Nor do I believe in any of the conspiracy theories linking these public health panjandrums to Bill Gates and Big Pharma and some diabolical plan to vaccinate 7.8 billion people. I have little doubt they’ve acted in good faith throughout – and that’s part of the problem. The road they’ve led us down has been paved with all the usual good intentions.

The mistakes these liberal policy-makers have made are depressingly familiar to anyone who’s studied the breed: overestimating the ability of the state to solve complicated problems as well as the capacity of state-run agencies to deliver on those solutions; failing to anticipate the unintended consequences of large-scale state interventions; thinking about public policy in terms of moral absolutes rather than trade-offs; chronic fiscal incontinence, with zero inhibitions about adding to the national debt; not trusting in the common sense of ordinary people and believing the only way to get them to avoid risky behaviour is to put strict rules in place and threaten them with fines or imprisonment if they disobey them (and ignoring those rules themselves, obviously); arrogantly assuming that anyone who challenges their policy preferences is either ignorant or evil; never venturing outside their metropolitan echo chambers; citizens of anywhere rather than somewhere… you know the rest. We’ve seen it a hundred times before.

More often than not, the “solutions” these left-leaning experts come up with make the problems they’re grappling with even worse, and so it will prove to be in this case. The evidence mounts on a daily basis that locking down whole populations in the hope of “flattening the curve” was a catastrophic error, perhaps the worst policy mistake ever committed by Western governments during peacetime. Just yesterday we learnt that the lockdowns have forced countries across the world to shut down TB treatment programmes which, over the next five years, could lead to 6.3 million additional cases of TB and 1.4 million deaths. There are so many stories like this it’s impossible to keep track. We will soon be able to say with something approaching certainty that the cure has been worse than the disease.

May 7, 2020

“When it’s over we can shave the heads of a few easy victims and vilify a few who enjoyed it too much. But I collaborated too.”

Filed under: Britain, Government, Health, History, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

The mandatory shutdown of most of the world’s economy is inducing some introspection:

Prime Minister Boris Johnson at his first Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, 25 July 2019.
Official photograph via Wikimedia Commons.

I looked again at the decisions of the Johnson government. Should they have followed my instincts? No lockdown. Shield the elderly and the vulnerable, like my elder daughters immuno-deficient boyfriend, but let all normal life continue. Let the virus rip. Let the football league play out its conclusion and more to the point let out beloved Dundee Stars Elite Ice Hockey Club break our hearts and miss the playoffs. Such a government would probably have fallen within days, battered by the broadcast media, backbench rebellion and a nation that preferred to be kept safe from the unknown that they feared. Had they survived the month, then the elderly who by choice refused to be shielded would have pitched up in their thousands at A&E, to be faced with experienced nurses like my wife who triaged them on the doorstep and sent many of them home to die, to preserve the ICU beds for those who could be saved. Instead of admitting them so that they could die with every bit as much certainty. Had he survived the first month, Johnson would have fallen regardless and nation would be traumatised by the memory of grandparents sent home to die

Had I been in his shoes, I too would have sued for peace. My nation demanded it of me. I would have convinced myself it was the right thing and when the chest pain and cough arrived, I would have felt relief that I had made the correct call. I would have looked at the Malice of Piers Morgan and convinced myself that I was still moderate. I would have dismissed the feeble objections of lunatic libertarians.

When it’s over we can shave the heads of a few easy victims and vilify a few who enjoyed it too much. But I collaborated too.

March 4, 2020

Sir Philip Rutnam, former civil servant and new hero of the resistance

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Brendan O’Neill on the unlikely new hero of the British bien pensant classes:

The liberal-left and even some on the supposedly radical left have a new hero: Sir Philip Rutnam. Yes, they’re now worshipping functionaries. They’re now falling at the feet of starched, bureaucratic civil servants. Worse, they seem to have completely forgotten about the Windrush scandal and the hostile environment policy – both of which were overseen by Sir Philip in his role as permanent secretary at the Home Office – in the rush to make him the hero of the hour. Why? Because Rutnam has crossed swords with Priti Patel, and the EU-pining, Boris-hating, populism-fearing left loathes nobody more than Priti Patel. Genghis Khan could have a pop at Priti and they’d be calling him a legend, such is the depth of their dislike for that “nasty woman”.

Official portrait of the Right Honourable Priti Patel, MP.
Photo by Richard Townshend.

The speed and obsequiousness with which leftish people canonised Rutnam following his resignation on Saturday was alarming. Most of them probably hadn’t heard of him prior to his flounce, but suddenly he was a cross between Mother Teresa and Winston Churchill, the bestest civil servant of our time, the steady, wise, clever counter to the rabid ideologism of the Boris mob. A breathless Guardian editorial likened Boris Johnson’s government to the Jacobin terror, with its use of “studied recklessness” to “disrupt [and] demoralise” representatives of “the ancien regime“, like Sir Philip, the People’s Civil Servant, the Bureaucrat of our Hearts. Steady on, Guardianistas: Rutnam has only lost his job, not his head.

The rash, highly political beatification of Sir Philip hasn’t only airbrushed out of view the various screw-ups he has overseen, from fairly mundane screw-ups (while he was in transport) to truly immoral ones (like the Windrush scandal while he was at the Home Office). No, it also turns a blind eye to the unusualness and the cynicism of his extravagant resignation. Civil servants have been falling out with governments for as long as both have existed. But normally the civil servant in question would take it on the chin, slink off into obscurity (or maybe the Lords), and live out a plush retirement. Not Rutnam. He made his resignation into a political weapon. He seems to be out to undermine the elected government. That is more scandalous than Priti Patel allegedly asking civil servants why they are all so “fucking useless”.

The Patel / Rutnam clash is more than a personality problem. It’s about politics, and democracy. According to reports – and we must wait to see how true all this is – Rutnam “obstructed” Patel. He reportedly thought she wasn’t up to the job of home secretary and allegedly tried to hinder some of her priorities. If this is true, it looks like the unelected wing of government – the machinery of the civil service – seeking to block the wishes and programme of the elected wing of government. And now Rutnam is threatening to sue the government for constructive dismissal, which would further weaken Patel’s position, potentially hamper her Home Office work, and posit the bureaucracy against elected ministers.

February 26, 2020

The Home Office – “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 05:00

From Stephen Pollard, one gets the sense that no rational politician would ever want to be Home Secretary in a British government:

Official portrait of the Right Honourable Priti Patel, MP.
Photo by Richard Townshend.

Here’s a trick question: which Home Secretary has been subject to hostile briefings from within the department that they are too Right-wing, too populist, too lazy, too stupid and a bully?

It’s a trick because the answer is: almost all of them. You can pretty much take your choice from any of those who have arrived at the Home Office with a definable agenda, and one that differs from the received Home Office wisdom.

The briefings currently being meted out against Priti Patel are certainly severe. She has been accused of creating an “atmosphere of fear” by officials, an allegation strongly denied by ministers. But in the sweep of recent political history, they are entirely normal. The Home Office has always played dirty when a minister attempts to overturn its shibboleths. The moment its mandarins sniff trouble, stories start appearing in the press about how the new minister is out of his or her depth, unthinking, posturing and — always the same — a variation on stupid.

[…]

The list of the Home Office’s responsibilities is ludicrously large, including: illegal drug use; alcohol strategy, policy and licensing conditions; terrorism; crime; public safety; border control; immigration; applications to enter and stay in the UK; issuing passports and visas; policing; fire prevention; fire rescue. In addition it is responsible for more than 30 agencies and public bodies.

John Reid infamously described its immigration department as “not fit for purpose”, and that quote has often been — understandably — misapplied to the Home Office as a whole.

The likes of Michael Howard and David Blunkett, who became Home Secretary in 2001, were political heavyweights with enough nous to get a grip of the hostile department. In preparing my biography of Blunkett, I spent months in and out of the Home Office when he was running the department, observing and speaking to officials — some who were supportive of their boss but others who clearly regarded him as an irritant.

One adviser to Blunkett recalls that the feeling was mutual. Blunkett wanted to replace the senior civil servants from top to bottom, and he and his aides were shocked at just how chaotic and inefficient the department was. “Nothing had prepared us for it,” recalled one adviser. “It was worse than any of us had imagined possible. God alone knows what Jack [Straw] did for four years. I am simply unable to comprehend how he could have left it as it was. At least Howard had the alibi that he was attempting a wholesale culture shift. In the Home Office, doing nothing means going backwards. It was a mess. A giant mess.”

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