Mad World

There are many reasons why the UK adopted disproportionate and catastrophic policies in response to Covid-19, and I have gone into them in detail, including  here , here and here . Deep beneath any government’s policies is a philosophy constructed by academics over many decades, and in this article I posit that postmodernism is to blame for our regressive response. Postmodernism evolved in the mid 20th century to counter modernism, to make the case that there was no such thing as objective truth, there were only subjective truths: each person could have their own ‘truths’. Nothing was out of bounds, even the claim that ‘the sun sets in the west’. What do you mean by ‘the west’, the postmodernists might say. What do you mean by ‘the sun’? A generous interpretation of the motives behind postmodernism would be along the lines of: everyone is different, everyone has different experiences and perspectives, it is right and respectful that we acknowledge this. A less generous interpreta...

One of the many disasters of 2020/21 has been the dismal inability of the Press to properly hold this government to account for its enthusiasm for dissolving previously taken-for-granted freedoms. Front-line journalists by and large seem unable to ask any questions along the lines of “what are the downsides of what you are doing?” or “where is the real-world evidence that your lockdowns are effective?”, instead going with a variation of “why did you not lock down harder/faster/forever?” Newspaper and online columnists have been, in part, a bit better. Hero of the era probably goes to the Mail on Sunday’s Peter Hitchens , who from the very start pointed out that what the government was doing was unprecedented, disproportionate and possibly illegal. The brickbats he faced without backing down speak of his bravery and commitment, and his willingness to debate with all and sundry on Twitter was to his credit. On the same paper, Dan Hodges was predictably disappointing, especially in the l...