WE are Tory anti-lockdown backbenchers, hear us roar!
The official launch today of the Conservative party’s Covid Recovery Group is a significant moment in providing some solid opposition to SAGE’s enthusiasm for locking down the country and the Cabinet’s general compliance in agreeing to do so.
The leader of no opposition, Mr Quiff himself Keir Starmer, has been utterly hopeless, nodding through every lockdown without a hint of any much needed questioning.
Labour has stayed quiet even when it was proven Doctor Doom Chris Whitty and his equally dangerous sidekick Patrick Vallance used an out-dated and discredited figure of 4,000 deaths a day to justify England shutting down for November.
When historians look back on Lockdown II, I can’t imagine they will be kind to our leaders who have given in to Covid hysteria, rather than sticking to a sensible regional plan that was beginning to work.
So just like the European Research Group, which helped to ensure Brexit was delivered, it’s left to 50 brave Tory backbenchers (with another 45 in the wings) to put their party loyalty on the line to ensure we never plunge the country into an unnecessary lockdown again.
Former Government Whip Mark Harper is the staid and sensible Chairman of the Covid Recovery Group, who had only voted against his party once in 15 years before refusing to back the current lockdown.
As he wrote in the Daily Telegraph today, all he’s wanting is “to start bringing some balance to the debate about how we live with the virus”.
He went on: “Lockdowns and restrictions cost lives, whether in undiagnosed cancer treatments, deteriorating mental health and missed A&E appointments – not to mention the impact they have on young people’s education, job prospects and our soaring debts.
“The country is badly in need of a different and enduring strategy for living with the virus that doesn’t require us to keep living under a series of damaging lockdowns and seemingly arbitrary restrictions.”
The group has three demands of Boris Johnson.
One: The government needs to commission and then publish a full cost-benefit analysis of draconian restrictions on a regional basis, with a pledge to lift them if they are not saving more lives than they cost.
Two: The make-up of the conservative scientists on SAGE must change, with input from the likes of Carl Heneghan and Sunetra Gupta from Oxford University.
Three: Improve the NHS Test and Trace programme – something I have no doubt Boris is desperate to do. The problem is, it’s much easier said than done.
I support this trio of aims and wish the Covid Recovery Group the very best of luck in influencing government policy on lockdowns.
Our future could be dependent on their success.