{"id":60227,"date":"2020-09-12T05:00:57","date_gmt":"2020-09-12T09:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=60227"},"modified":"2020-09-11T17:21:51","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T21:21:51","slug":"lovable-boris-johnson-is-currently-presiding-over-the-biggest-assault-on-the-british-peoples-freedoms-since-cromwells-commonwealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/09\/12\/lovable-boris-johnson-is-currently-presiding-over-the-biggest-assault-on-the-british-peoples-freedoms-since-cromwells-commonwealth\/","title":{"rendered":"“‘Lovable’ Boris Johnson is currently presiding over the biggest assault on the British people’s freedoms since Cromwell’s Commonwealth”"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Delingpole<\/a> has had it with Boris Johnson’s proto-fascist approach to dealing with the Wuhan Coronavirus:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Boris Johnson on 15 February 2018.
Photo by Velislav Nikolov via Wikimedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n

… ask yourself how you\u2019d have felt a year ago \u2014 or even six months ago \u2014 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?<\/p>\n

Your first reaction would have been: “Impossible. This is the kind of thing that excitable foreigners engage in. Never the phlegmatic, rational British \u2013 and certainly, never, ever, EVER so long as there’s a Conservative government in power.”<\/p>\n

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<\/em> currently being adapted for Amazon Prime or Netflix, yeah?”<\/p>\n

I still can\u2019t quite believe it myself.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

It’s possible that Boris\u2019’s brush with death earlier this year \u2014 his excessive weight, unfortunately, put him in the Covid at-risk category \u2014 may have stolen his mojo and left him a dried-out husk entirely unfit for public office.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 at least where statesmanship is concerned \u2014 at rising to the occasion.<\/p>\n

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).<\/p>\n

But maybe the most shocking part of the tyranny Boris is currently imposing on Britain is the lack of justification for it.<\/p>\n

If Covid-19 really were a version, say, of the Black Death \u2014 which wiped out 60 per cent of Europe’s population \u2014 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 \u2014 and if only someone could build a time machine, sharpish, maybe we could facilitate this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And if that wasn’t enough, check out this graph!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Delingpole has had it with Boris Johnson’s proto-fascist approach to dealing with the Wuhan Coronavirus: … ask yourself how you\u2019d have felt a year ago \u2014 or even six months ago \u2014 if you’d been told a British government was planning to institute a 10pm curfew, ban gatherings of more than six people, impose […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,84,66,10],"tags":[1293,1202,244,1363],"class_list":["post-60227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-government","category-health-science","category-liberty","tag-borisjohnson","tag-epidemic","tag-publichealth","tag-wuhancoronavirus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fFp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60231,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60227\/revisions\/60231"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}