CONSENSUS in politics should be treated with great caution.
Now, 100,000 phone messages and 2.3 million words later, universal accord has been proven to be wrong.
What many suspected is being revealed by the Daily Telegraph and, while we wait the formal inquiry, these disclosures cannot be ignored.
Like most countries, panic drove much of the early pandemic response as senior health experts warned that many thousands could die.
We now know that just a few ministers and officials worked together to impose the greatest infringement of our liberties in our peacetime history.
What’s illuminating is that this decision to mandate masks, limit gatherings, extend lockdowns, curtail exercise, shut schools and separate families – to name but a few – were made after a few arbitrary decisions on WhatsApp.
Inexcusably, fear was weaponised to ensure obedience, even after a vaccine was found, with the police asked to enforce harsh and unreasonable laws.
And no account was taken on how these Orwellian rules might affect us in the longer term.
Today, the damage is all too evident, with the economy and citizens still trying to come to terms with the consequences.
There were a handful of brave souls, like former Supreme Court Justice Lord Sumption, who raised concerns, but they were dismissed as Covid-deniers, even extremists in some cases.
To be fair to the then Prime Minister, he had severe doubts about lock-downs and he did, in the end, lift them far sooner than anyone else would have done.
He was also responsible for the speedy vaccine rollout.
We will, inevitably, face another pandemic in the future and we must learn the lessons from this episode.
However, shutting down the country must always be regarded as the last resort.