He also says he objected to what he called the “fear narrative,” the government’s messaging about the dangers of the virus. The release of posters of people on respirators was the worst, he said. It’s a powerful image, isn’t it? All that fearlessness and determination ripples beneath a cashmere hood. Sunak, in his own eyes, was nothing less than a duel for common sense and human rights in the face of evangelical lockdown monomania. Even more moving is Sunak’s analysis of the root cause of how the UK suffered. The government’s fatal mistake, he argues, was to “empower” the independent scientists of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) to such an extent that they “screwed up” the country. Good. Even with the lockdowns, according to the latest death certificate figures, more than 170,000 people have died from Covid since the start of the pandemic. How many more tens of thousands of victims would it take for Sunak to admit that the lockdowns actually served a vital purpose? The fact is, in almost every line of the interview – clearly an attempt to harass the libertarian wing of the party faithful – Sunak is talking nonsense. It claims, for example, that Sage “had the power to decide whether or not the country would go into lockdown.” But this is completely wrong. Sage’s role was, and remains, advisory. It is up to the executive branch to make the tough decisions, a concept I believe is known as leadership. In fact, Sage was so incompetent that after a few short months of ‘following the science’ – or at least he was supposed to – Downing Street quickly went off the track. In September 2020, for example, Sage pleaded with Johnson to lock down to avoid a devastating second wave. As Sage member Professor Stephen Reicher explained to this newspaper at the time: “On September 21, the Sage scientific advisory body published a paper with a simple message: do something now or you will lose control of the virus. That ‘something’ should be enough to reduce infections to a level where the virus could be controlled without closing businesses and curtailing livelihoods.” The government chose to ignore Sage, and surely Britain found itself, in Reicher’s words, “occupying the worst of all worlds: a vacuum where the pandemic lingers and does more damage, leaving us desperate and praying for a vaccine.” Sunak also alleges evasion, spin and a lack of transparency by Sage, claiming the panel would issue terrifying scenarios of what would happen if Britain did not impose a lockdown, without disclosing the basis on which they were calculated: “I was like: “Summarize the key assumptions for me, on one page, with a bunch of sensitivities and reasoning for each.” The first year I could never get that.” But that too is applause. Take, for example, the Imperial College modeling that influenced the lockdown decision for the first time in March 2020. This model predicted 250,000 deaths without any intervention. It was published, in its entirety – raw data, statistical analysis, summary and conclusions – on March 16, 2020. Perhaps Sunak, who must have missed it then, would like to read it here? I can only conclude that Sunak is so desperate to become Prime Minister that he decided to make a populist pun on rewriting the history of Covid. It reminds me of Dean Russell, the Tory MP who confronted Chris Whitty last December asking him harshly: “People are worried that we are prioritizing Covid over other things, especially the Omicron variant. You know, Covid over cancer, Covid over other serious issues. How about that?” Whitty’s response, which is understated, applies to both Sunak and Russell: “That’s what people say sometimes who don’t understand health at all. And when they say it, it’s usually because they want to make a political point. The idea that lockdowns cause problems with things like cancer is a complete reversal of reality. If we didn’t have the lockdowns, the whole system would be in deep, deep trouble, and the effects on things like heart attacks and strokes and all the other things that people still have to show up for when they’ve had them would be even worse than what was”. Sunak is flirting with votes, twisting what really happened to fit a narrative some voters want to hear. Worse, the misinformation it spews is dangerous. It encourages the public to think the worst of scientists, only exacerbating mistrust and division. The fact is that scientists have not had enough power – and have at times been used as human shields for political incompetence and procrastination. Shame on Sunak for degrading himself.
