MPs’ round-up
Light at the end of a long, dark tunnel of restrictions The vaccination programme that’s currently underway has seen a mobilisation of the state’s resources that is unprecedented in peacetime. In the time that it usually takes a government proposal to migrate from one Whitehall desk to another, we’ve seen over 2.5 million people receive vaccines, two-fifths of the over 80s receive their jabs, 150 teams of our soldiers deliver crucial supplies to vaccination sites and over a thousand vaccination sites mushroom into existence, seemingly overnight. Mario Cuomo once defined the difference between politics and government as
Somerton & Frome MP David Warburton analogous to that between poetry and prose. And that distinction is being given a new resonance as the new year starts.
Having been in touch to offer my support to those tasked with delivering the vaccine in Wincanton, Bruton and beyond, I know the very real challenges they face in delivering those vaccinations that, it seems, offer our only way out of the restrictions we currently face. And as someone with a background in establishing and running small businesses, I find this renewed focus on action rather than rhetoric both refreshing and sobering. It is in the aggregate of thousands of individual efforts (from NHS workers, the human myriad links in the supply chain and the
individual responsibility of the public) that deliverance from this latest iteration of lockdown will be found. Over the next two weeks, we will see hundreds more vaccination sites established. This will ensure that by the end of the month, no-one will be more than ten miles away from one – and, if they are, they have access to a mobile team. Unlike the first lockdown, this period of restrictions can be plotted against a parallel track that offers not just a hope, but the certainty of release. And as these critical weeks progress, I’ll continue to offer all those engaged in this heroic effort my full support.
Half-cocked Commons & Cancel Culture Parliament isn’t working as it should and the sooner we get back to some sort of normal the better. Meanwhile we have to largely take part virtually, a sterile experience that I hope we will see the back of just as soon as vaccination numbers allow. I have been pressing ministers on what level of vaccination it thinks would be sufficient to ease restrictions. Once the truly vulnerable have been jabbed there can be little justification for keeping society bottled up. At this time with liberty under pressure, we should be very wary of those who would curtail freedom of speech. There have been a couple of troubling examples recently. First, YouTube’s decision to suspend the radio channel TalkRadio. Its offence was criticism of lockdowns. YouTube’s programmers apparently decided that respected scientists, such as Professor Carl Heneghan, should not be allowed to 64
MP for South West Wiltshire Dr Andrew Murrison speak out against “Covid-19 content that explicitly contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization.” Possibly when reminded that WHO itself has questioned the desirability of lockdowns, YouTube recanted but the damage was done. The second, now infamous, episode was the ‘cancelling’ of President Donald Trump, not only from social media sites Twitter and Facebook,
but from Apple and Google who removed the platform Parler from their services altogether. Scenes from Washington have been appalling in the dying days of the Trump presidency - the sort of thing you expect in a banana republic, not the US. I for one can’t possibly respect a man who has done so much to diminish his office, the standing of the US and political discourse in general. So, this is by no means a defence of Trump and I did vote for lockdown in the Commons. However, I am deeply worried about the high priests of social media who seem so ready to restrict freedom of speech and mute voices other than those subscribing to their own world view. These social media moguls have shown themselves to be what we might see as a new clerisy. Can it be right that half a dozen Californian
billionaires should decide what can be said and heard? Some might say that they operate private companies; they can censor what they like. The problem is, the US Supreme Court has previously ruled that cyberspace represents a public forum. Thus Trump was not allowed to block people from his account because it breached the US First Amendment. Talk of media being free or independent generally implies independent of government. But the censorship recently applied to President Trump shows that independence is a quality that needs to be qualified. Are we really extolling the independence of a tiny cabal of eye-wateringly rich Americans against whose name nobody has ever scratched a cross? Say what you like about the wretched Donald Trump but at least he was voted into office.
