TRIGGERnometry - Peter Hitchens: "The Lockdown is a Catastrophe"

Episode Date: May 31, 2020

Peter Hitchens is a journalist, broadcaster and author of The Phoney Victory: The World War II Illusion. Support TRIGGERnometry: Paypal: https://bit.ly/2Tnz8yq https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@failinghuman) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kitten. And this is... Peter has ruined our introduction. But this is the show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people and our brilliant returning guest is Peter Hitchens, the author and journalist. Peter, welcome back to the show. Well, so far it's okay. Yeah, I have to say, we've never had a guest interrupt us mid-in-ro, but you've managed. So let's get straight into it.

One of the reasons that we were really keen to have you back on the show is that you have done a lot of alternative coverage, shall we say, of the lockdown and the coronavirus situation. So for anyone who has not been following your writing and opinions on this issue, just give us a brief overview of what is your opinion of what's happened and the lockdown measures that have been implemented. Okay, right from the start, I said that the response to the government was completely out of proportion to the size. of the menace. I didn't say there was no disease. I didn't say nobody would die and say it wasn't horrible for a lot of people if they got it. But I said that as an event, it simply didn't justify the measures being taken either to suppress liberty or to suppress the economy. I think that the damage to both human liberty and to the economy have been huge and probably permanent. And I think we will look back on this if we ever have a chance to do so with an impartial inquiry and say,

how on earth did we go mad to this extent? It simply wasn't justified, and it still isn't justified, and until the government admits it made a major mistake, we're never going to get out of it. Peter, and you say the damage has been permanent. I mean, the economy surely will recover, will it not? Well, I don't know whether it will. I mean, remember that we were on the verge of a major slump as this began,

and remember that the British economy is not actually in a very good state, despite all these boasts about it being the sixth biggest in the world, in real and more important terms of GDP and so forth. It's much lower down the scale and falling. The level of wages for many people has been falling. The standards of living for many people have been stagnant for some time. And our ability to recover, because we no longer manufacture very much, is pretty thin. And just at a time when China is beginning really to take off, it never looked good for us.

And we've now contracted a debt. enormous size, bigger than anything ever done in peacetime before. Now, wartime debts are terrible, and they do cause a great deal of trouble, but they are, of course, justified by the fact that you're fighting for national survival. Peace time debts are just as terrible and take just as long to pay off and do just as much damage, but you have to ask yourself whether this was justified. I think part of the problem is that people are living in this kind of dream time at the moment, The beautiful weather, the furlowing, which means people get paid for not working,

the huge numbers of professionals in the Southeast who are spared from the daily ground of commuting and so far have continued to be able to work from home. But will come a moment of awakening where many of those people find they don't have any jobs, or if they do, they're much worse paid than they were before. And that an economy based incredibly heavily on services, particularly shops and restaurants and bars, will have suffered enormously from months and months during which people couldn't actually make a living. And they can't. And a key feature of economics is not just the existence of money, but the speed in which it circulates.

And if your salary isn't paid, or if the rent that your own isn't paid for a quarter of the year, then the damage it does to your personal economy and to the national economy is huge. And people say it'll be a V-shaped recession and we'll leave out of it. Well, I hope they're right. but I have a strong feeling that they may be over-optimistic about that. And Peter, what do you say about the argument? There's lots of people who say, look, we need to protect our most vulnerable. We've got, you know, an ageing population.

There's lots of people who've got, you know, health issues. What we're doing is we're protecting the most vulnerable people in society, and you can't put a price on people's lives. Well, there are several points about that. One, we've been extremely bad at protecting the most vulnerable people in society, specifically those in care homes. who in fact by accident rather than by design, but certainly beyond doubt, have been exposed far more than they should have been to the virus and who are probably now the largest number of those people dying from it. They always were the most valuable and I think there was a strong reason to suppose this from the beginning and they certainly approved to be.

So if that's what we said we were doing, we failed to do it in practice. The other thing is, was this, were these, it's all very well saying that's what you want to do. but you're suffering from something must be done syndrome here. You look at something, it's terrible, you say something must be done, someone comes along with a mad set of ideas, you say, well, this is something, we'll do that. The ideas which we adopted for combating, it had very little to do with the problem. And the last thing you need to do is to put patients from hospitals into carehounds. But this appears to be what we did, and it was catastrophic.

But to quarantine the healthy is also an unprecedented action. And quarantining the sick is a long, long procedure going back for centuries. And it's perfectly sensible. But quarantining the healthy is an extraordinary thing to attack. And again, it's a question of proportion. And then there is the third point, which is how many people have died or otherwise suffered or will die otherwise suffer as a result of these methods? the healthy old have suffered hugely in terms of being deprived of normal life.

And as a brilliant man, Professor Sutraib Bakhti of the University of Mites in Germany, warned at the beginning of this, and I did what I could to publicise this meeting, it is precisely those people, the healthy, old and active in society who've suffered very, very greatly from this by being cut off from social contact, and the amount of misery, which of course brings on death. That, of course, is the effect which I think everybody acknowledges on the rest. of the Health Service, while the Health Service is concentrating entirely on COVID, all kinds of other things, particularly the detection and treatment of major cancers, is put to one side. And I think

there will be, when this is examined, a fair number of excess deaths, which have resulted from this policy, which have not been COVID deaths or not even been remotely related to COVID, which are among people who were deprived of treatments and checks they otherwise would have got, because of the panic. So sure, we're all concerned. I completely concede that my opponents in this argument are concerned with saving human life and their motives are good. Well, actually, so am I. But I think not really my motive's good, but I think my assessment and situation is better than theirs. And I think if my policy, much more closely aligned to what Sweden has done had been followed, fewer people would have died. In both cases, there's an interesting paradox in the

middle of this. Sweden made exactly the same mistake with care homes that we did. And it's had catastrophic numbers of deaths in care homes and is still getting them for that reason. And so, oddly enough, it's by no means can by no means to be advanced as a perfect example of how things should have been done. But it's quite a good example of how things should not have been done. And it simply did not shut down the economy. It did not trespass on people's personal liberty in the way that we have done here. And what would you say, because Sweden are very much anomaly, Peter. If you look at practically every other Western country, they've all followed our model. Why do you think Sweden adopted the correct tactic? Well, I don't know. In the old story of

the emperor's new clothes, there's only one person who will openly admit that the emperor is naked, and that's the little boy. Now, in real life, as we know, if that happened, the little boy would be cut it off by the secret police, his parents would be arrested. I'd know it again, and the the state propaganda organs would all say that the emperor's clothes are absolutely magnificent. But the point of the story is, of course, is of course otherwise. Peter, let me just jump in briefly there. Peter, I'm not trying to cut you off. I want to focus on the stuff about the shutting down of contrary opinions a little bit later.

But just, and we will get to that. Just tell us about Sweden. My main point about that is simply that to call Sweden the outlier when Sweden's policy was actually the most rational and governed probably by the most qualified people in the world is straight. And also, we're very Eurocentric when we look at this. We don't look particularly at Japan, which is just more or less come out of the whole thing, with fewer than a thousand deaths in a country of 126-odd million and several megacities,

which has also not followed the extreme procedures which we have done. And Taiwan is similar. They've not done that either, and they've come out reasonably well. It simply isn't possible to say that Sweden is the only country which has not followed the policies that we have. Peter, but let me take you back all the way to the beginning because it strikes me that one of the big difficulties for the government and this country in terms of not imposing a lockdown was actually the PR perspective of it all. If they had failed to introduce a lockdown, which by that point the public seemingly were clamoring for, I think they would be crucified. And I think that probably plays a huge part in their decision, don't you think? Well, it may well be, but its government's sure to be crucified sometimes for doing the right thing.

It's interesting to note that the government, and we can come into this as well, if you want, in its defense of Dominic Cummings, has been prepared to take quite a lot of crucifixion. And in my view, oddly enough, that I don't like Dominic Cummings and I don't approve of the policies that he has. it was a reasonable thing for them to stand up against this, but it shows that governments can, if they wish to do so, stand up to public opinion. I think a lot of the public opinion in this case was created by government in the first place. I think some of the advice to Sage suggested there was a desire from SAGE suggested there was a desire to create a level of fear, which is actually often quite easy to do, especially with

invisible threats, such as a virus. the difficulty is having created fear it's much, much harder to dispel it. So what would you have done, Peter? The threat supposedly is coming. People are, well, you say it was created by government, but some people are clamoring for lockdown. Lots of other countries are introducing a lockdown, and you would just, you would not have one at all?

No, I wouldn't. I don't. I think the word is repulsive. The word refers to the disciplinary action taken in American penitentary. against rioting convicts. And we're a free country of free people. I think the very use of the word lockdown is an acceptance of a lower, more servile state of life than the one that I personally have grown up with and we should defend.

So I won't use it except in inverted commas. What I would have done is more or less what I did. That is to say, I stood out against this from the earliest point of which I began to write about. I said I had serious doubts about what was being proposed and that we were getting it out of proportion. And I can demonstrate, And I can tell you that this was not pleasant.

The initial response to my saying this was an awful lot of derision and worse. And I thought I couldn't care less. The fact is it looks to me as if we're making a grave mistake and we should stand out against it. And I felt that it was very important for the future of the country, that those who did feel this way should stand up for it now. So it wouldn't later on be classified as hindsight and reflecting any feeling in the time. I found that there were quite a substantial minority. It was a minority of people who felt the same way. And it is perfectly possible to stand out.

If it's possible for me, a scribbler on a newspaper, to stand out against a way of the public opinion, then surely it's possible for her magistrate's government with all the resources its command and the huge authority given to it by the fact that it has a mandate from the electorate to stand out against it too. So yes, of course, a lot of the really important decisions in life is to do with not doing things. Mikhail Kutuzov pretty much defeated Napoleon by not engaging him in battle over Moscow. And almost anybody who knows only about military tactics knows that the crucial thing to do when you're being charged is not to respond until the last minute. You have to not do things a lot of the time and not doing something was important on this occasion. Certainly, it's much, much harder than the Swedes have made this point to get out of a shutdown of the economy and society than it is to get into it.

And this is the great danger of Britain now faces of who knows how long of shuffling around in muzzles and standing seven feet away from each other, making all commerce and pleasure and everything else impossible, if not impossible, immensely inconvenient and expensive in a way which will cripple the country, not least its education system, which has been dealt the most terrible blow, which I feel so much for all those students whose finals year this is and for all those school. pupils whose A-level years is. Their lives have been completely blighted by this, and they'll never get back what they've lost. And for what? Peter, and what do you say to those people who say, look, this is a deadly virus. You know, it has real health complications

that we don't know the long-term effects of, and we need to lock down in order to prevent inevitable deaths. And this is the only way to stop people dying. Well, I'm always very suspicious to people who say their way is the only way. This is the old Margaret Thatcher slogan. There is no alternative. Whenever anybody says that,

you know there is an alternative and they're trying to direct you away from it. Of course there's no. Yes, it is deadly to some people. No, it is not deadly to all people. And all the information we now have suggested in the main, I know there are exceptions, but in the main, it is much more dangerous to those who are old.

And I mean old, seriously old, and those who have a number of quite dangerous life-threatening conditions already. So it makes perfect sense for measures to be taken to protect them. But it doesn't make perfect sense to close down your whole society, nor if you're concerned about your ability to look after the population through a state-run National Health Service, does it make sense to destroy your economy and ravage your tax base so that for years to come you won't be able to afford even the much-criticized health service you have already, let alone the better one, everybody says they want.

So none of that makes sense. It's a non-secretor. If what you want is to protect people, then you, you'll be able to protect people, then you You need to be specific about it, wild general flailing propagandist actions will not get you anywhere. If you want to react to a crisis, you react to it in detail in ways which makes sense. And this is what we did not do and what we are not doing. And where do you stand on? Because Imperial College have come out for a lot of criticism for the modelling that they have done.

I think at one point they said that if nothing was done and no action was taken, I think the number that was quoted was half a million dead. Where do you stand on this? Do you think they wildly overreacted, or was that a fair assessment of the situation? Well, I recently republished a piece which I first published on March the 22nd, I think, in the mail on Sunday, in which I noted at the time the many criticisms that had been made of past advice given by Imperial College, particularly on the foot and mouth epidowing, which I was something of a personal witness nearly 20 years ago now, and quoting people as saying that it was not necessarily to be the lie upon.

And I thought at the time, I'm sure that Professor Ferguson, his colleagues at Imperial College, are motivated by unselfish desire to help others and by genuine belief in their own scientific method. But the fact is they're not the only epidemiologists on the blog, and there were others, notably Senator Gupta of Oxford University, who very early on it in this, suggested alternative ideas. And I think that the responsibility of government is to choose between, scientists when they differ. And I think the government didn't try hard enough to establish the world scientific views. They also didn't look at the very important views expressed by both Sukhryib Bhakti, who I mentioned earlier of minds, or of

of John Yonidis of Stanford University, who said that the levels of mortality which were being proposed by the imperial model were absurd. And has been, I think, vindicated by such a good votes. There were plenty of expert views available. It wasn't just a columnist for the mail on Sunday saying this. There were plenty of expert views available which conflicted with the ones which the government

chose to accept. So I don't doubt the sincerity or indeed the competence of the people whose advice was taken and doesn't seem to me to turn that I'd have been right. It's very difficult to predict things. And I'm not going to engage in personal attacks on

on individuals who would undoubtedly be doing their best. The responsibility of government was to work out whether they were looking at the right advice. It's my view that they took the wrong advice, and also they didn't try hard enough to seek for advice different from that which they pretty much already decided to follow. Do you think that, I mean, this idea of following the science, do you think that's just a shield that the government decided to hide behind instead of making difficult decisions?

I think it's an expression which betrays a misunderstanding. understanding of science. I'm not in any way, scientists. I'm obviously from the arts side of everything, but I know enough to know about the scientific method and how it works. And it doesn't require enormous amount of expertise to understand what the scientific method is. And one of the things about the scientific method is that it involves constant disputation. Every conclusion, which has been reached by one generation, is open to demolition by another generation. And the science is actually about dispute. There is no such thing as the science. Science is an argument in progress. And so to stand behind it as a shield, to use scientists as a human shield for your policy

failures, seems to me to be wrong. Scientists don't take that responsibility. They don't come on belong to government and say, look, I am right. You must do this. Not in general. Maybe some, but in general what they said, this is what we believe to be the case. And you must act as you see fit as a result of it. And to say that the thing is settled. And there was never any argument, isn't in my view, an invasion of responsibility by the political class. Look, I spend a lot of time telling you what's wrong with the world. So let me tell you about something that's actually right. Sleep, specifically getting more of it, better quality,

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And who knows? If you play your cards right, you'll end up looking like me. Well, that's exactly it, because what I saw with it, it just, I mean, it was obviously not possible that the science was only one way. There were going to be scientists and doctors who saw it a different way. But it seemed like politicians in many countries essentially abrogated their responsibility for making decisions based on. I think that the political class in most modern countries is extremely immature and ill-educated and unfitted for its task because politics has become a branch of show business. in which ambitious young people rise very rapidly to the top on the basis of the ability to entertain.

Not the way I do it, Peter, unfortunately. Sorry, Peter, carry on. I missed that. No, I said, not the way I do, unfortunately, Peter. It doesn't bear repeating, Peter, carry on, please. Part of the problem is they're not actually very entertaining in those cases, either. They're not even any good at that. I mean, I just look on the current...

One has many criticisms of political classes in all ages and all times, but when I was in my teens and 20s, at least one knew, for instance, that the people who were governing the country had had serious experience of that. I figured such as Dennis Healy, and he'd been beachmaster at Anzio. He'd seen people die beside him, and Ted Heath on the other side, likewise, had fought in the war. People had seen great events and understood the importance of what they were doing. I don't think, I can think of anybody in modern politics who has anything. remotely resuming that much experience of life or that much wisdom to draw upon. These are teenagers and they're panicked.

And do you think, I think this is a criticism that has been leveled against Johnson, but I think it's a particularly relevant criticism. So, for example, if you take Margaret Thatcher, whether you agree, whether you disagree with Thatcher, you cannot doubt that the woman had vision. She had a vision of what she wanted Britain to be. Yes. But you look at Johnson. I don't see a leader with vision.

I don't see Lee doing it. It's a very amusing company and can be entertaining to look at. But again, I don't think there's any driving idea. I agree with you. And I think that one of the things that's happened in one point of it is that those who are driven by ideas and police, the writers and books, the thinkers of, the thinkers of deep things, a by and large push to the margin by say the show business and gossip aspect of politics which makes such people unattractive if you don't look good on TV then who cares that

you know a lot you have a lot of experience you won't rise to the top in modern politics it's a really fascinating point you make and I think maybe our obsession with youth is probably part of that as well Peter but you know we used to talk about the big beasts of politics I'm not sure there's any I'm not sure there's any beasts left let alone big beast They're all small, feral creatures fighting each other's tails. There are no big beasts. Who are they? Name you one. And Peter, so we've talked about, you know, the other people, the other epidemiologists,

the other virologists who put forward a different case. Which case do you think was the most persuasive and the most scientifically valid? Was there one particular one? Well, I'm not qualified to say that. What I can say is that what we have seen since this happened has tended to show that the imperial model was mistaken. I think it was much harder to say this obviously at the beginning that it's possible to. But I think that there was a great jumping to conclusions and people wanted to do something big. And here is the real difficulty for me.

What has happened here? Why have we become, in the course of really three months, a much, much more regimented country, for a much, much more government interference with the police telling us to do things which they've never previously had the nerve to do. What's happened here? I think that there is an enthusiasm in the modern state

for expanding its powers. I think they saw in the Imperial College modeling an opportunity to do so. I think for many years, just stating in the midst of this, like a cuckoo in the nest, has been a strong state. And I think this is its opportunity to gain a great deal of extra strength, which I think is going to be very, very unwilling to give up. And talking about the misuse of power and strength, Peter,

and kind of moving on to the other part of this conversation, there has been a lot of big tech censorship around this issue, interviews with prominent scientists, some of whom you mentioned being taken down from YouTube, sometimes they reinstate and sometimes not. What do you make of the response in terms of managing information that has happened? YouTube saying they take down any unauthoritative content. Who knows? Maybe this video will be taken down simply because you dare to criticize a lockdown. Who is there to say? Once you set yourself up as the person saying, then you give yourself an enormous matter of power, which I don't think anybody actually deserves to have. And this is one of the

principal objections to censorship. And people will say it's not censorship, it's not done by the government. But I would say there's not much difference, really, is it between actions taken by a monopoly provider of platforms, so actions taken by government. And I don't really care. You'd say it's not censorship. Well, it looks terribly like it, and it has in many cases the same effect. If you do that, you're saying this idea is too dangerous to be allowed to circulate. People are not to be trusted to be able to work out for themselves, whether it's garbage or dangerous or whatever it is. And you're giving yourself more power, it seems to me, that any authority should have in any free society. We all know about our free societies. We can look now at the People's Republic of China,

which I think even the most reluctant critics have now begun to concede is a terrible despotic police state. That's one way of running in society. And it has its efficiencies and its advantages, which no doubt appeal to some people. But it doesn't appeal to me. And I think most of what makes life good in the part of the world in which we live is the fact that we aren't like that. So I think we have to look at anybody who tends towards the Chinese model and say, well, what gives you? Who gave you? Who died and made you king?

Who gave you the power to behave like this? That's just wrong. I'm glad that YouTube have on at least one occasion known to me withdrawn from doing so. But I think there should be more protest against it when it happens. And I think that YouTube should reconsider very strongly its policy of imagining that it has the right to decide what people are allowed to see. Who do they think they are? And Peter, where do you stand on this argument? So let's take the example of David Ike.

David Ike has done a number of interviews, some of which, I think one was taken down, and then 5G masks were then burnt down. Where do you stand on the argument? Now, what we're in is an exceptional time. And as a result, we need to make sure that the public is not exposed to ideas that may be dangerous. That could then lead to an outbreak of hysteria, 5G mask burning, etc. I'm very, I've always stuck. I know in Britain we can't have a First Amendment because we don't, because we have the sovereign partners, and therefore you cannot have it.

the constitutional clause saying Parliament shall make no law. But in general, I think the First Amendment is a good model for free speech law. And it has exceptions. It's always said, for instance, that incitement to crime is straightforwardly wrong. So anybody who incites the burning down at 5G masks or anything of that kind is plainly breaking the law against incitement. And it's not a free speech issue. But if they're not doing that, and if they're not inciting violence,

And if they're not, in the classic old cliche, they're not shouting fire in a crowded theater where there is no fire, then I think that's a different matter. And it's also, there's a very grave tendency to attempt guilt by association shutdowns by saying, what you're saying will lead to deaths because people will die unnecessarily of COVID-19 because you've argued against measures, which would save their lives, that kind of thing being advanced against me, for instance. that is just censorship dressed up as morality. There has to be a straightforward line. There's a lot of jurisprudence on the First Amendment. And I always recommend to anybody who's interested, there's a fascinating book called The Shadow University about the long battle to try and maintain

some sort of speech on American campuses during the rise of the speech code. And an awful lot of work has been done to try and streamline and explain and make clear the full effects of the First Amendment. And the people should re-see where these borders run, but they do run. And they never, ever prevent the free expression of opinion

or the free expression of criticism of government as such. And to be honest, you, I agree with you, Peter. And what I'm really worried about at the moment is this outbreak of hysteria. And I think we've seen it with the Dominic Cummings incident. Now, I don't particularly agree with what Cummings did. I think it was irresponsible and all the rest of it. But I think the reaction to it has been really, really worrying. We've just seen members of the press either on Twitter or wherever it may be

just behave as if they're losing their mind. Well, I'm about losing their minds. I think a lot of people, I think we have to recognize this in all our dealings with everybody at the moment. I notice it. After all these weeks of confinement at home and have been deprived of. normal routines. A lot of people are on edge. They're much, they're much ready to go off the rails than they would normally be. And people are doing my wife especially, yeah. You will have to, she will have to speak to you about that.

We are all, we are all. A lot of people are doing things which I think when they look back on their behavior, I say, how on earth did I get into that state of mind? I think this is such an unnatural state of life in which we find ourselves. that people are doing things they wouldn't normally do and it's massive hysteria always a much bigger problem than individual hysteria is definitely about I think the problem that Dominic Cummings

may I say this the first time I met Dominic Cummings nearly 20 years ago I loathed him on site nothing that I've ever heard or seen since ever caused me to doubt or regret that decision I don't like him I don't like the government he works for I'm not his spokesman

but I agree with you this has been a ludicrous event. The things that he did were perfectly normal actions, which are not a matter for the criminal law or disapproval. I also strongly disapproved of the network of informers, which we seem to have developed in this country, of people who are prepared to inform on their neighbours

for doing things which are not actually illegal or, in my view, necessarily wrong. What's wrong in this country is the imposition of some almost completely insane rules of life, which Dominic Cummings didn't follow. There are two points here. One, the reason why Dominic Cunning should be in trouble of any kind is quite simply that he demonstrated that he himself didn't believe in the rules which he was urging everybody

else to do. And the government, I don't think the same thing happened with Professor Ferguson when he was caught being visited by his, how should I put it? Faramore. I try to be as polite and measured as possible here. again, if he'd really believe the stuff that he was saying, how could he have done that? And here we were. He was a good-looking woman, Peter.

She was a good-looking woman. If Tonya Cummings really believed the stuff the government was telling the public, how could he have done what he did? He could now. So obviously, he didn't believe it. But the thing was, the public ought to be angry with the stupid rules and with the stupid government's imposing them. But instead, it was diverted into a scalp hunt against the individual. This has become a feature of politics in recent years.

media go along with it because they can often win. They get a scalp at the end of it, which makes them look more powerful than they actually are. And governments get away with it because they can toss somebody off the sledge and watch the wolves rend them to pieces. Well, they carry on doing what they were doing in the first place. So no real politics take place. I'm against it really because it's not about politics. But it is amazing that are people who apparently submitted without protests to mass house arrests and to the destruction of their livelihoods by the government, are prepared to get angry about an individual who drives his family to Castle to Barnard Castle. It seems to me to be a failure of proportion on the ground

scale. And do you think that Cummings has served essentially as a lightning rod for the disenchantment of the people, of the British public and where they find themselves? Well, I hope that's one of the reasons why I very much hope they keep him on. And my own theory is that the best thing to do with John Cummings is to make him attend all the all the future government briefings on COVID-19, only prominently displayed, but only wearing one of those muzzle things. The government seems to think such a good idea. Always, always there to remind everybody that while it drones on about testing and tracking

all this, the government doesn't believe a word of what it's saying. That, I believe, would be an appropriate punishment for Dominic Cummings. But if he's fired, that he will be a lightning rod. or lightning conductor, as I say. But if he's kept on, then no, he won't be, because people might begin to be angry with the government rather than with Dominic Cummings and angry with the rules rather than with Dominic Cummings,

which is what I would like to see. It's fascinating the kind of transformation that has happened in our political debate and our cultural space, isn't it? Because we now take moral guidance from Piers Morgan and Alistair Campbell. It's interesting, isn't it? But when you look at the Archbishop of Canterbury,

it's hardly surprising that people are saying, searching else where. And Constantine there touched on the press. I might say, I have to say, getting moral guidance from Alastair Campbell is, well, not something that I would personally seek. I mean, that's a very diplomatic way of putting it. And I'm sure.

I always thought all the people involved, you know that when someone is given an honour, long service in government, they're KGB or an MBE or whatever it is. I think all the people involved in the Iraq war should have WMD permanently after their names. It should always be whenever he comes up on television should be Alistair Campbell WMD. That's a fantastic idea, although I would take it one step further. Every time, never ever to be forgotten.

Tartooed into their foreheads, Peter. If anybody wants to take anything they say seriously after that, then that's their legat. Hello, guys, and welcome to my bedroom, aka Dormitorio del procreatione. Now, we've got one of our returning sponsors coming back this week. It's actually one of our favorite sponsors. It is the wonderful Hello Fresh. And Hello Fresh are brilliant because they deliver to your door freshly prepared ingredients from scratch,

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And actually, Hello Fresh, you've got a brilliant deal coming up now, where they're going to offer you 50% off your first box and then 35% off your next three boxes. That's 50% off your first box and 35% of your next three boxes. I mean, that is an absolute lovely deal. If you want to take advantage of this fantastic offer which is exclusive to Trigonometry Fans,

all you need to do is go to www.com.org. Use the code Trigger and it will give you 50% off your first box and 35% of your next three boxes. And guys, you're going to look like an absolute professional in the kitchen. Basically, you're going to look like me. And isn't that what everyone wants? And so we're talking, Constantine, very touched on the press with Pierce Morgan. How do you think the British press have conducted themselves in this national crisis? Do you reckon they've covered themselves in glory?

Well, no. I think that the number of organs and television stations and everybody's who've been prepared to actually give a voice to dissent has been. too small. And nonetheless, here I am. I have been able to say prominently what I have said for all this time. A lot of people have heard it. I've not me in my own newspaper, but the very credible intervention of Mike Graham on talk radio who disagrees with me, but who has each week allowed me a weekly half hour in which I dispute with him, the whole nature of the virus panic. Even Pierce Morgan, I mean, Pierce and I are not exactly made for each other, but he did at the beginning of this, invite me onto his program. And of course, he had, given the nature of what

he'd been saying up to think, he had to give me a hard time. But the fact was, there it was, on a major television news and current affairs program, there was I able to put the contrary case. So we'll credit peers on that. So it's not, it's not totally bad. It just could have been a heck of a lot better. It's getting better. More and more people who didn't have all that much courage to begin with are finding their courage to criticize this, and more and more people are realizing that it may well have been a mistake. But they're going to need to be an awful lot more if we're to get out of it. Because as I say, the only way we will ever get out of it is the government actually openly admits, which should be very good for them as well as for us,

that it made a mistake and that it overestimated the danger. These precautions are absurd and won't work and that to save the country is what what remains of the country's economy and to restore our liberties they simply have to accept that they did it wrong oddly enough i think there would be a great deal of rejoicing in the public if any government ever actually admitted to make to make a mistake on this occasion the mistake is so large uh that the opportunity is so great that i i do very very sincerely uh hope that something in the kind will happen for the sake of all of this. And I suppose actually that's an issue where the opposition wouldn't really be able to make much hay out of it because they're on record as having endorsed and supported

the lockdown as well. So for them to say that, and I'm very much in that camp, Peter, I initially thought that it was the right decision, but I think on reflection, I do feel like it was an overreaction. I think the opposition have discredited themselves, and if a parliament has discredited itself. I think this is this, during course the Cromwellian period, parliaments had lots of names like the bare bones parliament and the ramp parliament and the whatever it else was parliament. I think this parliament should go down in history either as the supine parliament or the plastic parliament. It has been so completely useless. They have not in any way on their rations. There's been hardly a voice of criticism. There wasn't even a vote over the passage of the coronavirus act.

The Her Majesty's opposition has never at any stage opposed fundamentally the policy or thought it was even its duty to examine it. The same, to some extent, must be said of a lot of other areas of civil society. A lot of the media, as I say, the Academy. The civil service, I think, might have been tougher in offering contrary advice. I don't know where the courts have been. I know that Simon Dolan has been trying for some time to get the court. to look at it, but it's taken him an awful lot of time to get not anywhere very fast,

which when you compare that with what happened with Gina Miller and with the other great Supreme Court case over the preroging of Parliament, is an interesting contrast, whether you could see that the Supreme Court in that case was itching to get involved. Now the courts seem to me to have stayed out. Almost every one of the safety device is built into our Constitution against this kind of silly panic, has failed to function. The thing I'm trying to get at is in terms of, you obviously think the lockdown was a mistake, right? And I guess what I'm asking is, will we ever know?

Because we've had a lot of excess deaths. The question is, have they come from the coronavirus or have they come from the impact of the lockdown? And that effect will continue, as you say, because if people aren't attending cancer screenings, if cancer screenings are not being done in the same quantity as they were before, et cetera, et cetera, we will have this long-running impact, which anyone who wants to say the lockdown was right will say, well, look, these excess deaths happened. If we hadn't locked down, it would have been worse. And equally, people on your side of the argument would say, well, look at all these tests

from the lockdown, that was a mistake. So will we even ever know? I won't just say that. I would say that if the government needs to establish that any of the actions that it took actually saved a single life or reduced any real. pressure on the National Health Service. At the moment, the government is like a druid going to the villages of some benighted village near a river and saying, look, if you don't sacrifice your herd of cows, there's going to be a terrible flood and you'll all drown. And so the villagers believing

the druids as they do sacrifice their cattle and mournfully eat them. And the river doesn't flood. And the druid's, if they see, you sacrificed your cattle, it's been their flood. And how can anyone then prove that it wasn't because the villages sacrificed their cattle at the road? It didn't flood in a primitive society, but in an advanced society such as ours, we can have an inquiry. But hold on. Are you saying that keeping people physically separate, it doesn't help? Are you saying that keeping people physically separate doesn't prevent the spread of the coronavirus? Well, I don't see any reason. I mean, it's fascinating fact. And it hasn't had anything like as much coverage as it should have done.

But Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York State commissioned a survey of those people who've been hospitalized since he shut down the state for coronavirus. And 66% of those who've been hospitalized stayed obediently at home. So you tell me, we actually know surprising little about the transmission of this virus. We also know surprising little about when it arrived. So, for instance, there are definitely, it's a case of coronavirus, which has now been uncovered in France, in December of 2019. And many people that I know suspect that they had it long before the panic began.

We're also now getting information about its ability to spread, which seems to suggest that it may not be much above 20%. So we don't know. One other thing I might point out to you, and I think this every time I see somebody when I'm out on my bicycle,

somebody veers 20 feet away to avoid passing too close to me, and they're often wearing a muzzle as well. it's actually far easier to spread a virus when you're in close contact with somebody in a house than when you're out walking. And so confining people to their homes may actually spread it. I don't know. Here is the fact what is clear is that no one can demonstrate that this mass confinement of the population has actually achieved it.

The virus, if you look at its behavior, although there are variations in different parts of the world, which are quite possibly to do wholly different things, follows a pretty straightforward belt-earth pattern. It begins, it rises to a peak, it comes to an end. And there's very little evidence that any human action has any effect on that. And I wait for anyone to provide any. And given, if all they'd done was say,

declared an extra bank holiday or or change supermarket opening hours or something of that kind, then you wouldn't mind too much. These people have crashed the economy of an advanced country and confined millions of people to their homes and prevented them from working for weeks. And they require much more of the justification of having done that than any of that they can provide so far.

The thing that I'm worried about, Peter, and look, my worries are selfish, of course I are, because we're inherently selfish. However, I can't see an end to this. I was thinking about this the other day, and I was thinking, and, you know, people are talking about a vaccine. From what I've read, there's never been a vaccine that has ever been created against the coronavirus. If you think about the last great pandemic that we have, that we have enjoyed, it's the HIV AIDS virus. There is still no vaccine against HIV AIDS. And you think to yourself, well, if that been the case, how are we going to get out of this and what is society going to be like if we have this inverted

commas new normal? Well, I completely agree. That's why I say the government must admit it made a mistake because this will never work. And we were talking earlier on about excess deaths. Yes, there are it, but there have been previous occasions of excess deaths, usually involving influenza. And I now have to say, because if I don't say it, I will be slandered. I have to say, yes, I know coronavirus is not influenza, okay? I know it's not, I'm not saying that it is. What I am saying is that there have been previous outbreaks of a disease, which have had very similar effects on excess deaths.

There's an interesting website in proportion, which I urge people to study, which makes these comparisons, making allowances for the changes in population. And there are two occasions in recent years, and one in 1968-69, the famous, as it then was Hong Kong flu, or Mao flu, as it was sometimes known. It sounds very problematic. A number of excess deaths was either as great as, or in 68, 69, considerably greater than this. There's also an interesting article, I think the virus came too late, pointing out that the main distinction between coronavirus and the other previous epidemics in this kind is that it comes later in the year. But if it had come in January,

March, February, it would have seemed much less surprising. Most Western European hospital systems are used to these quite large outbreaks quite frequently happening, and they are often not significantly greater than what we've undergone. So it isn't as exceptional as it's been made out to be, and the completely false equation of it with the 1918 and so-called Spanish influence, which had nothing to do with Spain as it happens, is to be avoided. The 1918 outbreak killed the young and healthy in terrifyingly large numbers. And COVID-19 does not do that. But you're right about the difficulties of creating a vaccination for a virus in this kind. And one of the difficulties is there's a decreasing number of people who can actually be found in Gossett, which is causing

research of some great practical difficulties. And unless, less than until we recognize that we overreacted to it, then we are stuck with these endless measures of track and trace on our phones and scary messages from the government and face muzzles and keeping children sitting miles apart from each other in school and not being able to go to the pub without plastic screens dangling from the ceiling, all kinds of useless, expensive rubbish, which will make life unpleasant and will also destroy commerce. And people say, well, commerce, who cares about that set against life? Well, A, you're not saving rights, and B, the economy is what sustains life. If there's no economy, where is the money to come from for

their food and for the clean water and for the decent housing, which are the basis of good health? And where is it to come from for the health service, which we've claimed to value so much? We've devastated our tax base. So the ability of this country to pay for a health service of the kind of want in the years to come, it's going to be greatly damaged by this. And people will suffer as a result. People are really suffering. Anybody who tries to do anything

with the health service at the moment knows that it's not working by means, that it's at the level of working out before. For anything other than COVID, the thing has been a great diversion. And that's for the madness of dentistry. It is said that one of the worst pains in the world comes if you have serious teeth problems.

But you try if you've got an emergency dental problem, getting anybody to do anything about this country. Madness. It's being trivialized. It's really, really important for the numbers of people who are suffering. And the government is just letting it go on and on and on, because they won't admit that they made a mistake. Do you think the health consequences of the way we've reacted

are going to run for years and years? You can't tell exactly how bad the damage is. The enormous loan in which Maynard Keynes negotiated for this country from the United States at the end of the Second World War when Lendleece stopped was negotiated, I think, July of 1945 and wasn't paid off until December 2006. My entire childhood was spent in a country which was constantly weighed down by the paying off of and the paying of interest on that enormous loan. Our lives were grayer and more pinched and our public services worse. You look at things like council house building in the early 50s. Look at the low standards of the architecture and the building. The country was poor, and it was poor because it was in debt,

but that was a debt honorably contracted as a result of war. In this occasion, it's going to be poor because of a debt contracted because of government mistake. Choice hotels get you more of what you value. it's calling your name Save on the stay Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim Book direct at storeshirtails.com And Peter

For how long I don't know We're into Yeah, I mean, it's a very, very good point I mean, we interviewed a comedian and an expert on the economy called Dominic Frisbee And he made the point, he did a book on the history of tax which was very interesting. And he said that in wartime, every war time,

every government uses it as an opportunity to introduce new tax, to raise taxes. Do you think after this, the government and Rishi Sunak are going to turn around and go, look, we furloughed a lot of you and we paid your wages. Unfortunately, now is payback time.

And we are going to be taxed up to the hill in an effort to get, you know, to repay the debt. It's not an opportunity. I mean, so it's certainly true that there must have been some people who wanted a bigger state who were glad of the excuses of all time to make the state bigger, particularly the 1914 to 18 to begin with, but 39 to 45 as well. Rishi Suna has no choice. It is really a question of how soon he has to announce the emergency budget, the first, I think, of many emergency budgets,

which you will have to introduce, which I will be one of the few people who will not be shocked by. And these budgets will be very serious, and people who think that it can all be loaded on the well off are very much mistaken. The things, VAT, duties on all kinds of things,

due to particularly on travel, I wonder how many people who long to go back on holiday are going to feel about how much more expensive it's going to be to go on holiday. Quite possibly there's going to be. be something called the capital levy, a raid on the savings. That means, amongst other things, quite possibly on the value of houses which people have bought is unprecedented in a free country such as this, which people will find,

particularly since it's levied on the savings they've made from already taxed money, they'll find very oppressive. But the government will probably call it something like an NHS surcharge. It'll be very hard to resist politically, and I doubt very much whether the Labour opposition will resist it because they will know their own economists know. that there is no choice. The government is going to have to increase tax. The other thing is, as a country, we are going to be so much in debt that the levels of interest, which we're going to be willing to pay, to the pension funds and the insurance companies, which loans

so much the money to the government, are going to be fantastically low. That means a raid on the pensions and savings of millions of people, because old ages will be under threat. That also happens. The other thing is that the world will look at us and see an economy much weaker than most, and it may be less and less willing to lend us money on the terms which we've been willing to do so. And one of the results of this will certainly be a decline in the international value of the pound's selling. So again, that has many, many effects, particularly on the cost of imported goods and on our

ability to travel abroad, which people will feel there's going to be a lot of things going on. And all of them are going to hurt. And as I say, this is a dream time. This long, long period of sunny weather during which the chattering glasses of lays in their gardens, drinking glasses of misted glasses of wadres shably,

misted glasses of waitress shably, thinking it's all going to be great. It isn't. They'll be lucky to be able to afford the shably when this is over in my guess. It's going to be really hot. It can't be anything else. No one, no government ever spent this much money in peace time.

Horrifying prophecy there from Peter Hitchens. The middle classes will have to go without Shabbly. Indeed, it's a terrifying prospect, as it not, but they are. It may go home in a way that other warnings don't. Peter, we're coming to the end of the interview. So we have one more question, but before I ask our question, just summarize it in one word for us. The lockdown has been finished the sentence.

A catastrophe. There you go. One more question. Okay, Peter, and obviously the last question that we always finish our interviews with is, what is the one thing that we're not talking about as a society that we really should be? The one thing we're not talking about as a society. Oh, dear. I can't reduce it to one thing.

I knew you're going to ask me this, and I can't do it because there are now currently so many. I think we really have to be more realistic about our position as a nation. I think we live in a world of illusion about how important and how rich we are. And I think that this illusion is about to come to a very, very brutal end. I think we're going to have some worry finally in a way that we haven't done, even since the Second World War and all the other great events in the past. century. We're going to have to worry very much on what sort of country is this? How important are we? How rich are we? What is it that we really, really are concerned about becoming? How can we,

how can we cope with our diminished status? What are we going to have to give up? And you've been talking about this. You've been talking about this for some time, Peter, and talking about our overestimation of Britain's role in the world. What do you think our approach should be? How should we see ourselves going forward? I think we should have an outbreak of I think a very good symbolic action for us to take would be to abandon the modernization of the Trident nuclear weapons system. Having spent all the blood and treasure we have done on becoming a nuclear power, I think we should give it up entirely, we should keep a few bonds for old times' sake, but the maintenance

of a vast Cold War superpower nuclear weapons system is an absurdity given our lack of wealth and importance. should go and in the in the abandoning of it we should recognize our change status and begin to consider what we really want to spend our wealth on and what sort of country we would be a big good it would be a good thing to do anyway in a good psychological moment and I say this is a very pro-defense a highly conservative person who who comes from a service family so don't accuse me of being so kind of peace name it's just something that has to go So you haven't embraced hippie being a hippie in your later years, Peter then?

I'm sorry? I said you haven't embraced being a hippie in peace and loving. No, no, it doesn't appeal. I've always either been a reactionary patriot or a droskiist. Both actually seem to me to be markedly similar positions when you strip away the externals. But no, hippie is never appealed. Well, on that happy note, Peter Hitchens, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Everybody, thank you for watching.

make sure you go follow Peter on Twitter at Clark Micah, is that right? It is. Yep, Clark Micah. The explanation of this curious handle is to be found on Peter Hitchin's FAQs, which really does exist and you can Google it. Fantastic. Well, Peter, thank you so much for coming back and we'll see you again soon. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.