WITH the pandemic behind us, it’s remarkable how lockdown’s former advocates seem now to have amnesia.
Leadership contender Rishi Sunak has gone public with his recollections and suddenly everyone agrees that lockdown was not warranted.
The evidence that this authoritarian move harmed our health, freedom, economy, education, justice system and even our very joie de vivre mounts almost by the day.
So, where are these doomsters who demanded more masks, more regulations and more penalties?
Yes, they’ve gone to ground.
And, yet, it was only two years ago that we were ordered to stay in our homes, frightened into mute submission by grim government advertising and apocalyptic scenarios.
Almost no one questioned the modelling, assumptions and graphs used by the Sage Committee of independent scientists that advised Government.
In fact, Mr Sunak told the Spectator magazine that dissenting voices were edited out of decisive committee minutes.
The few of us who dared to question and vote against the unprecedented attack on our freedoms were castigated for selfishly threatening the lives of others.
Alternative approaches, like the Great Barrington Declaration, signed by 63,000 doctors and medical scientists worldwide, were widely rubbished, while conspiracy theorists who blamed China, or suggested alternative remedies, were blocked on social media.
One of the sanest voices throughout this ordeal was former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption.
Right from the beginning, he warned of stoking public fear to quell dissent.
Now, he says, after haemorrhaging an “unproductive” £400 billion, we have the slowest growth in Europe, soaring excess deaths at home and the biggest drop in GDP in over a century, with enduring economic and social damage.
His view that lockdown was “an experiment in authoritarian government unmatched in our history,” is hard to disagree with.