The Street of Shame

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 latter stages, despite some scepticism early on, and an evocative piece he filed after a visit to a scared, beaten-down Wales.

Over on the daily paper Richard Littlejohn had many good moments, with some typical gallows humour in his columns, though he blotted his copybook by forgetting libertarianism later on by calling for the likes of plumbers to carry vaccination certificates. Bel Mooney had some excellent pieces, including a moving one about the death of her father, which also served to highlight the scandal of the miscounting of Covid deaths. Andrew Pierce mostly continued his role of unthinking Tory party brown-noser.

At the Express Frederick Forsyth soon came round with refreshing vigour to pour scorn on Boris Johnson, as, like many of us, the scales fell from his eyes and he saw the blundering, dangerous, freedom-hating buffoon for what he was. Anne Widdecombe and Leo McKinstry had their moments but were inconsistent. Richard Madeley was another who, after initial support for the government, began to realise the overreach and mission creep, and spoke out in articulate fashion. 

A journalist he spoke to was Allison Pearson, on the Telegraph’s refreshing Planet Normal podcast, which also features the superb Liam Halligan, him of laser-like brain. Pearson is another of the heroes of Our Darkest Hour, an unexpected one perhaps, combining the healthy instincts of a mother and daughter with that of a sharp-minded, evidence-seeking journalist who can write like a dream. She wove homespun wisdom into national matters in a not dissimilar way as Mrs Thatcher had done 40 years or so before.

The Telegraph appeared to be home to the most astute sceptical voices. Sherelle Jacobs’s analysis was often one step ahead of the rest: for instance, she wrote first that the sceptics battle was, tragically, being lost. Philip Johnston contributed some cerebral pieces. Ross Clark, who also freelances for the Mail, Express and Spectator, found himself in great demand for his forensic dissection of whatever nonsense the government did. Andrew Lilico was hit and miss, as was Patrick O’Flynn, and the less said about the astonishingly wrong-headed Judith Woods the better (masks in classrooms were no big deal for her). The Telegraph columnists who excelled were some not generally associated with politics: Travel Editor Oliver Brown many times carefully deconstructed the government’s paper-thin logic for its draconian travel restrictions, while Annabel Fenwick-Elliott penned some brilliant exposures of Johnson's madness. Janet Daley spoke sense while, remarkably, so did William Hague when he came out as a lockdown sceptic last autumn; he didn’t return to the subject as much as surely merited though. On Sundays, Daniel Hannan was mostly excellent.

On the Business pages, Jeremy Warner wavered between being a lockdown sceptic in a similar way as he does on the benefits of Brexit or how well he expects the economy to go. His colleague Ambrose Evans-Pritchard committed the cardinal sin of complimenting zero-Covid proponent anthropologist Devi Sridhar as ‘always getting it right’. Allister Heath put them both to shame with some characteristically perspicacious pieces, including the correct assertion last autumn that Sweden had handled things a thousand times better than we had done.

It is disappointing that Charles Moore didn’t speak out more about the UK’s descent into a police state; he did tell Allison Pearson that he was closer to the Great Barrington Declaration’s position than that of the government’s but that was about it. One suspects that he is too close to Johnson and some Cabinet members to fully speak out. Peter Hitchens had named him and Douglas Murray as the two journalists who had disappointed him most in not coming forward, and he might have had a point. With Murray, the most switched-on cultural commentator in Britain, the case is more complex - Murray did begin to speak out more when the second lockdown came into force but, but had been reticent to before because he doesn’t like to pontificate too much on matters on which he does not feel he is an expert (he also had the USA's breakdown on his plate). But even a quarter-expert Murray is better than the vast majority of other commentators.

Except perhaps Rod Liddle, the most readable columnist in the nation. In The Sun, The Sunday Times and The Spectator, the take-no-prisoners Liddle gradually came round to a more sceptical position and wrote about it with his usual panache. He still wasn’t 100% sound on the subject, but maybe that’s part of Liddle’s appeal. His pal on The Sun, Trevor Kavanagh, had a slightly bizarre campaign. While his instincts were generally sound he put out a few extraordinarily wrong and weird pieces, such as the one in January claiming that jolly Boris Johnson would lift most restrictions by the end of February. It seems like Kavanagh is in close touch with Downing Street, who often feed him information that he would like to hear rather than what is true; he certainly offered some strangely flattering portraits of a prime minister who was driving our economy and society into the ditch. Kavanagh’s Monday column replicated his output under the Blair government when he showed good instincts in astutely writing about the dangers of Blair, but was still part of his newspaper’s support for Blair.

Silly little boy Owen Jones at The Guardian wonderfully kept up his glorious record of Being Wrong On Every Single Major Issue by being a lockdown fanatic, as usual a poster boy for the modern Left who have forgotten what the Left used to stand for. Suzanne Moore, who proved herself too unsafe for The Guardian by making the outrageous claim that there is such a thing as a biological woman, moved to the Telegraph in the midst of the madness, but brought with her the scary view that we hadn’t had enough of our freedoms crushed in 2020. About the closest The Guardian got to sanity was the columns of Simon Jenkins. The one-time Lefties at Spiked were, as fantastically as ever, on the side of freedom, especially the tigerish trio of Tom Slater, Brendan O’Neill and Fraser Myers. True-to-form, Ella Wheelan was almost but not quite as good, as demonstrated on Spiked's weekly podcast, like when she was overly cautious in February about the return of our freedoms. Her colleagues pointed to the roll-out of the vaccines changing everything, in the closest they ever got to a disagreement on that 'cast.

Talking of podcasts, it was entirely in character that on TRIGGERnometery duo Konstantin Kosin and Francis Foster would come round to a sceptical position after initially admitting that they didn’t have the information to oppose the lockdowns. When that information arrived it was the time many of us realised that we had to change course dramatically; tragically, our intellectually broken administration did not agree. The lovely Peter Whittle on the New Culture Forum was predictably temperate and correct in his assessments of yet another failing of a ‘Conservative’ government. Toby Young is of course THE Lockdown Sceptics man, and his chats with James Delingpole on London Calling were compelling, at least until they decided to tone it down a bit too much. It would be cruel to say that Delingpole, like Spinal Tap, is seeing his ‘appeal become more selective’, and even crueller to say that as in Spike Milligan’s words about Tony Hancock, he risks shutting doors on everyone he knows and finally shutting the door on himself. But Delingpole’s purity is refreshing, and he’s certainly committed (whereas a couple of the more conspiracy theorist type guests on his Delingpod, like Charlie Ward, should be committed). Young, though, has made a great ambassador for the causes of scepticism and enquiry, and one hopes that one fine day he will be given a place in the Lords.

His Spectator pals had varied wars, with editor Fraser Nelson characteristically fluctuating in his position. One was never quite sure what his position on Sweden was from week to week; but this is a man with a damned fine mind. It’s harder to trust James Forsyth, as his wife is ensconced in Downing Street. Regular Spectator staffers were largely non-committal, but the magazine provided a valuable platform for the brilliant likes of Dr John Lee, and, less pleasingly, for the monomaniacal Dr Simon Clarke. Lionel Shriver's observations were as brilliant as her writing.

The Times and Sunday Times were pretty spotty. In The Sunday Times Dominic Lawson (who also writes for the Mail) demonstrated that he hasn’t inherited quite all of his father’s acumen - he was occasionally as wrong as his sister the cook. Melanie Phillips was a huge disappointment to many on the Right, but the warning signs have been there for years: this woman is very far from libertarian. Iain Martin was as squidgy as ever and David Aaronovitch reliably diabolical, while the soggy Matthew Parris proved surprisingly sound. Wise op eds did pop up, from people like Alice Thomson, but on the whole the Times group did its usual of going along with whatever the current establishment orthodoxy is.

On TV on Good Morning Britain there was Piers ‘Morgan’ Moron, as Private Eye has it, doing his bit to whip up hysteria and dumb down any rational discourse; that this liar, hypocrite and charlatan can claim to be an advocate of free speech is just one of the many nauseating things about him. His former newspaper The Mirror did its Authoritarian Left bit to the hilt, and even managed to annoy us Johnson-haters with its asinine COWARD headline just before Christmas. Even the Daily Star was more attuned as to what was really going on than this red rag. Virtually all Talk Radio presenters independently came round to a lockdown sceptical view (as did the admirable Maajid Nawaz on LBC), with special plaudits going to the magnificent Julia Hartley-Brewer and canny old newspaperman Mike Graham. They were so good YouTube temporarily took them down, before an outcry.

So it was a mixed performance from the British Press. That there were many sceptical voices and they appeared to have minimal effect on the lockdown-loving public demonstrates that they are no longer the influencers they once were. Social media, which is built for hysteria, had more of an influence, with tragic results.