FIVE YEARS AGO TODAY: Boris Johnson orders UK lockdown to be enforced by police.
Boris Johnson will order police to enforce a strict coronavirus lockdown, with a ban on gatherings of more than two people and strict limits on exercise, as he told the British public: “You must stay at home.”
The prime minister ratcheted up Britain’s response with an address to the nation on Monday evening, warning that people would only be allowed outside to buy food or medication, exercise alone once a day, or to travel to work if absolutely necessary.
All non-essential shops will close with immediate effect, as will playgrounds and libraries, he said in the address from Downing Street.
After days of being accused of sending mixed messages about what the public should do, Johnson significantly escalated his language as he urged people to comply with the more stringent measures.
“You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say no. You should not be meeting family members who do not live in your home. You should not be going shopping except for essentials like food and medicine – and you should do this as little as you can,” he said.
“If you don’t follow the rules, the police will have the powers to enforce them, including through fines and dispersing gatherings.”
“You should not be meeting friends. If your friends ask you to meet, you should say no.” Some found that order rather difficult to follow, not least of whom was “Professor Lockdown” himself: What Neil Ferguson’s booty call tells us about modern politics.
The conspiratorial left, convinced the world is run by secret cabals of bankers and cigar-chomping media moguls, thinks the Neil Ferguson story is a ‘dead cat’. In other words, they think the Daily Telegraph – Evil Tory Rag – revealed that Ferguson carried on bonking his mistress in defiance of a lockdown that he himself bears much responsibility for in order to distract attention from Britain overtaking Italy with the highest Covid death toll in Europe. A ‘dead cat’ strategy is when a sensationalist story is introduced to the mix to divert attention from a far more serious political crisis. Ferguson’s sexual antics are the Tory regime’s dead cat to Britain’s corona death toll, apparently.
This sums up the political infantilism of the left. It is actually incredibly important news that Ferguson, the Imperial College modeller who said it was possible 500,000 Brits would die if we didn’t lock down, defied the lockdown. It deserves the frontpage treatment it is getting today. For Ferguson’s booty call with his married lover actually reveals a great deal about the 21st-century elites and how they view their relationship with the masses. It’s one rule for them and another for us. They can carry on enjoying sneaky freedoms because their lives and jobs are important; we can’t because we are mere little people, whose silly work lives can casually be disrupted, whose love lives can be turned upside down, and whose families can be ripped apart. The Ferguson affair provides an illuminating insight into the new elitism.
As does the person with whom Ferguson hooked up with on said booty call:
On at least two occasions, Antonia Staats, 38, traveled across London from her home in the south of the capital to spend time with the government scientist, nicknamed Professor Lockdown,” reported the Telegraph.
Staats, we later learn, lives with her husband and two children in a £1.9 million home in south London. She’s a “left-wing campaigner” who is reportedly in an open marriage. According to the Telegraph, “She has told friends about her relationship with Prof Ferguson, but does not believe their actions to be hypocritical because she considers the households to be one.”
Ah yes, the old our-households-are-one-because-I’m-in-an-open-marriage argument. Never mind that a week before Ferguson and Staats’ first meeting, Britain’s Health Secretary had said even couples not living together must stay apart during the lockdown.
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One rule for the poor people, another rule for us elites. And they wonder how they got Brexit.
But “Professor Lockdown” and his paramour weren’t the only high-ranking brits to violate Boris Johnson’s strict lockdown orders. There was also some chap called…Boris Johnson: U.K. “Partygate” probe reveals details of illegal, booze-fueled parties at PM Boris Johnson’s house during COVID lockdown.
Some of the 16 events under investigation were held at 10 Downing Street — Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s official home and office — and the Cabinet Office, and should not have been allowed to take place, investigator Sue Gray concluded in her 37-page report, adding that “other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.”
In April, Johnson was for attending his birthday party, making him the first British prime minister ever found to have broken the law while in office.
“What took place at many of these gatherings and the way in which they developed was not in line with COVID guidance at the time,” Gray said.
The report included 10 redacted photographs, including four that show Johnson himself attending a birthday party in his honor in June 2020, and four others that show him raising a glass at another event. Both events were held at his Downing Street office.
Or to put it another way: Boris Johnson Missed His Churchill Moment. The pandemic was Boris’s biggest test. He failed.
The entire world had surrendered to the People’s Republic of China, adopting its totalitarian disease-control strategy, and unlike France or Poland in World War II, we surrendered without a shot being fired. If any man in the world was well-positioned to stand against this, it was the garrulous British renegade, Boris Johnson. Instead, the United Kingdom became a police state.
Well, not the entire world: How Sweden proved the world wrong about lockdowns: The evidence is clear: authoritarian restrictions did not save more lives.
As for Boris’ future, Theodore Dalrymple reviews his autobiography at City Journal and concludes:
How will history—that is to say, those who write history—judge Boris Johnson, and what of his own future? Will he be seen just as a mountebank and an opportunist, who rode a wave of discontent to assuage his own demanding, not to say imperious, ego? To return to the question: Behind the frivolous facade, were there just layers of frivolity ad infinitum, or was there a bedrock of serious intent?
I find it difficult to answer. Again, it is hard to be too damning of a man whom one has met and liked. That was, after all, why George Orwell did not want to meet the authors of the books he reviewed. At the same time, I understand those who splutter at the mention of his name.
As to Boris’s future, I think it would be a mistake to write him off. Public memory is short, and at the next election, in 2028, he will be only 64, by which time, if he continues his present trajectory, Keir Starmer will be the most reviled man in recent British history. Boris will be able to pose again as the only way through an impasse: I got Brexit done; now, I will remove Starmer!
Just pay no attention to what I did during 2020 and 2021…
