In a way, it would’ve been a breath of fresh air to have been proven wrong, to have had all suspicions and scepticism exposed as ill-founded and to realise our elected leaders were acting out of genuine concern for the people after all. Alas, so engrained now is mistrust of the political class – and not without good reason, lest we forget – that it seems we were destined to have our worst fears confirmed once the private exchanges between those who implemented pandemic policies began seeping out into a mainstream media that slavishly toed the party line at the time. Two or three years later, the MSM has changed direction with the wind and is belatedly engaged in a sequence of double-takes, as though any of these so-called revelations are remotely surprising. In a way, it’s an amusing measure of just how remarkably dim Matt Hancock really is that he entrusted his WhatsApp messages to a Fleet Street snake like Isabel Oakeshott when she was co-authoring his pandemic diaries; true to her nature, Ms Oakeshott proceeded to pass them on to the Daily Telegraph, and now the former Health Secretary’s true thoughts during the period in which he and the Government adopted an approach to civil liberties that Oliver Cromwell would have regarded as a bit extreme are laid bare for all to see. And what an unedifying example of the contempt in which Hancock and his cohorts hold the proles they truly are. And we all thought they cared, didn’t we.
‘Hilarious! I just want to see some of the faces of people coming out of first-class and into a premier inn shoe box.’ That was the reaction of Whitehall mandarin Simon Case to Matt Hancock when the sudden branding of certain countries as ‘red list’ meant any Brit returning from them would have to be quarantined in hotels at the princely sum of £1,750 per person; the notion that these would all be jet-setters returning from skiing holidays is a crude generalisation that distorts the fact that not-so affluent individuals often have to travel abroad to visit family and may well have saved for years to do so. Hilarious indeed. Just how detached Ministers are from the economic realities the vast majority are governed by was further demonstrated in Boris Johnson’s reaction to the news that police crackdowns on ‘lockdown breakers’ had resulted in one specific case of £10,000 fines for two people; Hancock sent the PM the good news, to which Boris replied ‘Superb!’ The fines Boris & Co eventually received for their own spot of lockdown breaking reminded me of similar punishments dished out to Premier League footballers who bring the game into disrepute in that they were hardly likely to plunge those fined into poverty; what of the unfortunate plebs forced to fork out £10,000, though?
As for the instigation of Project Fear itself, whilst TV ad breaks and billboards were flooded with images of masked patients in hospital beds and shops were rationing customers as every available space was plastered with orders posing as advice, Hancock was busily reviewing the success of the campaign on WhatsApp, reminding his media adviser that ‘(We need) to frighten the pants off everyone with the new strain’ before asking ‘When do we deploy the new variant?’ Cabinet Secretary Simon Case evidently knew what worked, stressing ‘the fear/guilt factor (is) vital’. Needless to say, scaring the population into submission wasn’t entirely unprecedented; Project Fear tapped into the global catastrophe narrative in which the end of the world is always nigh; everything from Remainer predictions on the ramifications of Brexit to the elevation of an obnoxious schoolgirl into a secular prophet for the most nihilistic crusade of the age had helped generate widespread insecurities primed to play straight into Government hands. Indeed, one could argue the only competence Boris’s administration showed was in enlisting the obedient compliance of the populace, for in this particular instance the end of the world could be averted if you did as you were told.
Those who expressed grave doubts as to what was being done were criticised at best, demonised at worst, and some were effectively no-platformed, their dissenting voices dismissed as Covid-denying, anti-vax, right-wing extremism; even the respected academics who were the prime signatories to the Great Barrington Declaration – which offered a more humane approach to dealing with Covid that made ring-fencing care homes a top priority – had their reputations blackened and besmirched. The MSM and social media, as well as their Big Tech paymasters, clamped down on any deviancy from the official narrative to the point where few were prepared to air their concerns; and the few that dared to were rapidly silenced, anyway. YouTube and Twitter were censoring freedom of speech like cyberspace Covid Marshals, goose-stepping across hard-fought civil rights that had been one of the achievements of Western civilisation for centuries and grinding them to dust.
Meanwhile, out in the real world the STASI-like encouragement to grass-up one’s neighbours was complemented by drones tracking dog-walkers, and coppers threatening to fine householders sat in their own front gardens if they didn’t go back inside. The employment of virtual curfews, the cavalier destruction of industry and the economy, ruthless pharmaceutical gambling with the lives of the perfectly healthy, the interruption of education and the polluting of infant minds, the outlawing of religious services, the house arrest and solitary confinement of the elderly and mentally ill, the suspension of travelling, the closing-down of sports, hospitality and entertainment venues, and the untold psychological effects of informing people that every step outdoors would kill another granny – all played their part in a period so unnervingly nightmarish that it’s almost hard to believe it actually happened now. But it did, and those that enforced it with their edicts were pissing themselves at the rest of us as they and their pals made a fast buck out of the crisis, snogged their aides, and stopped-off at the off-licence en route to Downing Street.
It’s no wonder so many entombed indoors concluded this was the ultimate conspiracy theory, the culmination of every Great Reset rumour that had been gathering pace for years. One friend of mine bought heavily into the conspiracy theory angle during lockdown and was severely impacted by the concurrent insecurity about where it would lead us; most who know him are convinced it contributed to his subsequent breakdown and radical change of personality. But the irony is, as much as it’s strangely reassuring to believe events beyond our control are being orchestrated by a malevolent global coterie of governments, corporations and so on, the Matt Hancock WhatsApp leaks simply confirm the fact that those pulling the pandemic strings were mainly making it up as they went along; yes, most of them were callous, avaricious individuals who were utterly indifferent when it came to the damage they were doing to the lives of the masses, but they weren’t agents of some SMERSH-like syndicate; they were merely mediocrities who had suddenly been handed the kind of powers they’d never dreamt would ever fall into their hands – not unlike the underachieving nonentities the SS often made commandants of concentration camps; few powers corrupt quite like those given to little men and women who would otherwise amount to nothing.
We also shouldn’t neglect to remember – as we edge towards an inevitable change of government – that opposition parties were even more rabid lockdown fanatics than the heartless implementers of policies whose private personas have finally been made public. Rather than offer a counterbalance to the increasingly draconian legislation the Tories were rushing through Parliament as they became thoroughly sozzled on unlimited power, Labour and the Lib Dems instead offered an alternative that was even more draconian, even more extreme, even more undemocratic, and even more doom-mongering. I suppose they were simply building on the example set before them on the other side of the House. After all, as Matt Hancock said on WhatsApp, fear was ‘vital’.
© The Editor
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Anyone looking for proof of Peter Capaldi’s gifts as an actor need not only recall the fact he continued to exude the necessary charisma and gravitas as Doctor Who despite the diminishing quality of the scripts and the Doctor’s impending exile on Planet Woke, but that he also gave us the memorably visceral Whitehall spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker in ‘The Thick of It’. There were dozens of scenes from the series in which Tucker’s hyperactive potty mouth scaled heights of genius linguistic obscenity, but Capaldi’s character was much more than just a viciously funny caricature of Alastair Campbell at his worst. I remember one episode in which Tucker had been toppled from his position of power and, suddenly deprived of his raison d’être, cut a lost, pathetic figure, realising he had little else to occupy his time; contacted by the producers of a reality TV show of the kind that seeks out has-beens and down-at-heel celebrities, Tucker swallows his pride and meets the producers. As the format of the programme is explained to him, Tucker’s despair at how low he’s sunk is writ large on his despondent countenance, and sympathy for a character who had previously elicited anything but is brilliantly coaxed out of the viewer. In the end, Malcolm Tucker walks out of the interview and shows his true grit by staging a successful comeback without recourse to reality television; perhaps Matt Hancock should have been taking notes.
A lockdown legacy one suspects those spellbound by the Chinese model didn’t anticipate was the fact many workers whose school-university-workplace conveyor belt hadn’t prepared them for an unscheduled interlude became converted to the unexpected absence of orders. After a lifetime of being told what to do and what to think by parents, teachers, lecturers and bosses, the drones were abruptly left to their own devices and abandoned by the authority figures they’d been meticulously taught to be subservient to from day one; they were initially as dazed and confused as North Koreans would be if deprived of the image of their glorious leader beaming down at them from every skyscraper. Big Brother was dead – or at the very least had been reincarnated as a scaremongering presence on TV and online informing us that any deviation from lockdown regulations would mean the blood of a thousand dying grannies would be on everyone’s hands. We now took our orders from medical experts on the Government payroll. Yet, at the same time, there were still all those scarily empty hours stretching ahead without edicts from Boris, Chris Whitty or…ahem…Neil Ferguson.
If gun culture was as prevalent here as it is in the US – yet one more example this week highlighting just how prevalent, of course – I reckon Boris Johnson could probably get away with ‘accidentally’ shooting dead a member of the Cabinet and declaring he didn’t recognise his trigger-happy actions as murder or even manslaughter; he’d no doubt face angry calls for his head at PMQs and still survive as PM, brazenly blustering his way through a denial that those lackeys he hadn’t killed would applaud and support in the face of Opposition outrage. He’d apologise to his dead colleague’s widow and then say it was time to ‘move on’. The incumbent Prime Minister would be able to evade justice because he’s surrounded by deliberately-chosen mediocrities on his own side and confronted by hapless no-hopers on the other, giving him the kind of leeway no other PM in living memory has ever been able to enjoy. I should imagine all of his surviving predecessors are green-eyed when it comes to his good fortune, not to mention envying the apparent apathy of the general public towards his shameless bullshit.
30-odd years ago, when satellite dishes were the latest addition to the increasingly-expanding abundance of street furniture, the allure of new television channels beyond the reach of the traditional terrestrial broadcasters prompted the girl I was living with at the time to invest in just such an alternative. We ended up with Cable TV, and despite the accompanying literature boasting about all the new shows we could now access, most of its appeal for me was as a repository for the long-forgotten programmes the old television lords and masters had dispensed with years before. There wasn’t much new material on offer that I myself found capable of piquing my curiosity – bar the novelty exhibitionism of ‘The Jerry Springer Show’ long before Jeremy Kyle encouraged the Great British Underclass to wash their own dirty linen in public; but the archive channels suddenly at my fingertips were a rich source of nostalgic entertainment and also (as it was still the 90s) a strain on my limited finances due to the amount of blank VHS tapes I felt compelled to buy to preserve them on.
Alas, poor Rishi! Remember that period, not so long ago, when the Chancellor would stand beside the PM and the pair together would look like a ‘before and after’ photo from one of those diet ads you often see on the backside of buses? Shagged-out, shabby, flabby Boris struggling to compete with the glowing picture of slim-line, male-model health that was Mr Sunak in his popular prime – the time when Rishi was dishing out the reddies to the furloughed workforce and soaring up the popularity polls as the heir apparent; seems like an aeon ago now, doesn’t it. Rarely can a contender have been so downgraded in so short a space of time as Rishi Sunak. From his badly-received budget to revelations of his wife’s tax avoidance to his fine for breaking lockdown restrictions, the Chancellor has had a terrible few weeks that appear to have left his alleged leadership ambitions in tatters. Obviously, the PM won’t be complaining; even though he himself is carrying the can for Partygate and has also been fined, the electorate expects nothing less from Boris after two and-a-half years. Rishi, on the other hand, offered hope (for some, at least) and is now fighting for Premier League survival in the relegation zone.
Nostalgia can be a curious beast; after a suitable distance, even the most ghastly fashions or hairstyles or pop groups can be reclaimed following decades of mockery from those who were there and resurrected as ironic, post-modern icons of kitsch hailing from a more ‘innocent’ era that suddenly seems refreshing to a generation too young to remember it. We’ve come to anticipate this trend in the absence of contemporary cultural earthquakes that would render an ongoing fascination with such fluff irrelevant; in a way, it’s perhaps a comment on the creative vacuum of this uninspiring century that the unceasing recycling of the recent past, no matter how awful, shows no sign of slowing down. Ten years is usually the shortest gap between ridicule and reappraisal, though sometimes it can be a little less; two years seems a bit extreme, however – even taking into account the gradual reduction of attention spans that is another present day trend.
I’ve been asked the question several times over the past couple of weeks if I think Boris is toast. I’ve only refrained from replying in the affirmative because of the evident absence of contenders waiting in the wilderness for the call to mount a challenge. There’s no obvious Michael Heseltine figure building up support and no Geoffrey Howe moment giving such a candidate the ammunition to strike when the Prime Minister is at his most vulnerable. Right now, the members of the Cabinet appear too mindful of their own perilous positions to stick the knife in with a devastating resignation speech or risk a career by standing against Boris, and of those exiled to the backbenches, none have the political clout or popular appeal that seemed set to hand the reins of power to Heseltine in 1990. Perhaps the fact Mrs Thatcher’s former Defence Secretary famously failed in his bid is at the back of Ministers’ minds as they shuffle uneasily in their seats and watch on as Boris stands in the firing line following the publication of the Sue Gray report into the ‘alleged breaches of lockdown’ at Downing Street.
The first ‘Christmas song’ hovered into my hearing range before we’d even reached December this year; November had yet to enter its dying days when my ears detected the familiar seasonal strains of a festive dirge in my local branch of Wilkos – though who can blame folk for wishing it into existence earlier than usual? To be honest, people are that desperate to have something to look forward to after the last eighteen months that it’s a wonder ‘Fairytale of New York’ or ‘Stop the Cavalry’ weren’t providing shoppers with a supermarket soundtrack when the initial restrictions were lifted back in the summer. Mind you, one of those tweeted online headlines did catch my eye the other day, one about Boris consulting with the Cabinet over whether or not to cancel Christmas 2021. Who does the fat f**k think he is – God? Or at least Oliver Cromwell? Our PM is evidently so drunk on unlimited powers that he seems to believe he has the authority or right to make such a decision. The ramifications of it would only affect me and thee, mind – lest we forget, it has recently emerged that the one place last Christmas wasn’t actually cancelled was 10 Downing Street. Fancy that!
The awful, inescapable sensation that we’ve been trapped in one long, drawn-out year since around March 2020 was something I expressed to a friend the other week when trying to recall a recent event, unable to remember if it occurred this year or last. As someone whose memory can be uncannily precise where childhood is concerned – to the point whereby I often catch a snatch of a melody and within seconds can accurately locate not just which childhood year the song was a hit in, but the month it charted – it’s not unusual to reach a certain age and find years much closer to the here and now have a habit of blurring into each other. It’s probably due to the fewer ‘first time’ experiences one receives as more miles are accumulated on the clock, invariably sticking to recognisable routes rather than veering off into uncharted territory. Childhood, by contrast, is nothing but first time experiences, with each one making a deep impression that naturally stays with us; I suppose having them all happen in quick succession means the clarity of the period as a whole remains strong in recollection, whilst the wider gaps between such occurrences as one gets older means there’s less for memory to hang on to.
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