Under new leadership

To win the next election for Labour there is a very easy route. Essentially, all Labour need to do is keep repeating that SirKeir is not Jeremy Corbyn and that a Labour government will put ‘Britain first’. As Rachael Swindon commented: “The “moral case for socialism” has been replaced with the language of Britain first. The vision of peace across the world has been replaced by the complicity of silence.” 

 

Labour activists watching SirKeir’s first conference speech would, if they were on the left, have been disappointed. This was not a speech for us. This was a pitch, the first of the many, to the “lost” Labour voters who delivered a Tory victory in December. Those voters, it is now believed by the Party hierarchy can be described as the “new working class”. SirKeir was born and brought up in Surrey and so, like a rock singer determined to find common cause with his audience, found a Grandmother from Doncaster to show how he was steeped in Northern working class reality. As RD Hale comments: “Just what us northerners want - a metropolitan elite who talks about "the desire to change lives for the better" but won't even hint at how he plans to achieve this.”

 

One thing this so-called “new working class” are apparently keen on is patriotism. As the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee put it: “Labour needs to appropriate patriotism as its own… Patriotism will be the weapon time and again to uphold British standards in animal welfare, food quality and environmental rules against bad foreign trade deals.” The problem is that this sounds more like British exceptionalism than patriotism, though perhaps that is just a semantic difference.

And, so Labour far from being a narrow sect concerned with socialism now has to rebrand itself as a party that “will act in the national interest.” Acting in the national interest is code for not kowtowing to the demands of members who for all their commitment and passion have no idea what the “new working class” are thinking.  It is okay within this to be critical of the Tories, after all Labour is still a different party but that criticism must be “a constructive opposition.”

In terms of the current lamentable management of the pandemic it means Labour “will support whatever reasonable steps are necessary to save lives and protect our NHS.” So, whilst offering constructive opposition, meaning in fact moderate and sensible opposition, it is okay to point out “the government has lost control. Our testing system collapsed just when we needed it most.” This both reminds the “new working class” that the Tories, who they supported (alongside most of the Shadow Cabinet and Labour establishment incidentally) that there is an alternative. That alternative is not radical (for which read unrealistic) but a sensible party very like the party they supported, but competent.

It is this strategy of appealing to Tory voters that explains what to those already committed to the Labour Party, particularly the hundreds of thousands of members, might seem as appeasement. When SirKeir says: “The British people want the government to succeed in fighting this virus. We all need the government to succeed. This is the time for leadership,” he is saying two things. First, to the “new working class” he is saying ‘we are not being critical of your government for the sake of it, because nobody wants the Government to succeed as much as the opposition!’ But, more importantly from SirKeir’s perspective, he is setting up the idea that the incompetent Tories cannot provide the leadership that he, and only he, can.

As the New Statesman’s Stephen Bush, a SirKeir critical friend, points out, the new message is not simply coming from SirKeir but other members of his Shadow Cabinet: “Anneliese Dodds, the shadow chancellor, opted to focus on the Conservative government’s “cavalier” use of public funds, and to promise that under her, the UK’s spending would be more cautious and sensible than under the Tories. Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, told the BBC that with Starmer as leader, Labour would always put Britain first, and indicated that the leader’s vow to maintain Corbyn-era tax-rising commitments had been rendered moot by the coronavirus recession.”

SirKeir used his speech to emphasise that “my leadership of this country, will be defined by the values I’ve held dear all my life. By the instincts and beliefs that inspired me to become a lawyer fighting for justice, to become the Director of Public Prosecutions…” Be clear here that was no throwaway line. The reference to his time as the DPP is the CV being presented at an extended job interview. To be fair it gave him by far his best line of the entire speech “While Boris Johnson was writing flippant columns about bendy bananas, I was defending victims and prosecuting terrorists.” There is, however, a double edge to that particular sword, not only that his work for the DPP includes some controversial decisions (particularly around Jean DeMenez shooting for which he couldn’t find any police office in breach of the law) but that many of the “new working class” rather like Boris Johnson’s flippancy and they believed that the EU was going to ban bendy bananas because it accorded with their prejudice. So, poking fun at these things, which had SirKeir’s media friends howling with laughter may not have gone down so well with those potential voters who probably haven’t forgiven the People’s Vote campaign for calling them ‘thick’. 

The more important issue is that The Labour Party now professes a strong belief in values almost as if Labour has suddenly discovered that such a thing as values actually exist. But what are those values? SirKeir doesn’t take long in telling us: “Family values mean the world to me.” Later he adds to the list but not without re-emphasising family: “A country in which we put family first. A country that embodies the values I hold dear. Decency, fairness, opportunity, compassion and security. Security for our nation, our families and for all of our communities.”

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with these values. True, family values, has been associated with the right and usually means being anti-gay, anti-abortion and defined by what it opposes rather than what it supports. But, family values is as clear an indication that you will get that SirKeir is shifting the party away from its grassroots. Decency is rather like Christmas, who could be against it? But, what does it mean? The same for fairness. Values sound good because they can mean all things to all people. Would SirKeir disagree with these values: “We stand for self-reliance, decency and respect for others.”  Or this: “..our hopes for a better world in which law and decency prevail..”

Or, “Our future lies in our beliefs and our values, we need to shed associations that bind us to our past failures...”

 

These quotes are from David Cameron, Margaret Thatcher and Ian Duncan-Smith respectively. The point of including them is not to show that SirKeir is a Tory, though he might be at least a little ‘c’ conservative, but rather to show that using values to define your politics is, ultimately, self-defeating. It is possible that Jeremy Corbyn has also used the terms ‘fairness’ and ‘respect’ at some time, though if he has I couldn’t find them, not because he doesn’t believe in fairness or respect or decency but rather because his speeches tended to have more substance to them.

 

SirKeir knows that in addition to appealing to the “new working class” he has to keep the Labour base. He knows that some on the left will be disgruntled by the tone of his speech and that many will leave the party as a result. I doubt whether he actually wants most of the activists to leave, but I doubt he cares much if Reg and Susan announce on Twitter that they have just burnt their membership cards. Nonetheless, for those members who want to believe he is worth supporting there has to be more than just criticism of the Tories. Hence, the sections on proper funding of the public sector: “And it always ends this way with Tory governments: public services are neglected, cut-back, and left to decline.” But note there is no commitment for further funding for the NHS, for social care or for education. Indeed, nothing that could be framed as a policy.

 

Only on Brexit was there anything that sounded like a policy and it will have been, allegedly, music to the ears of the “new working class” if not to Labour’s members.

 

“And on Brexit, let me be absolutely clear. The debate between Leave and Remain is over. We’re not going to be a party that keeps banging on about Europe.”

 

SirKeir wants us to forget that he was not only a remainer but nailed his colours very openly to the People’s Vote campaign. It was this campaign, together with years of neglect, that led to the collapse of the Labour vote in the so-called ‘Red Wall’ and SirKeir was the architect of that campaign. In March although he said the debate was over he said he did not rule our rejoining. The architect of the most ambiguous policy ever created at the last General Election has clearly learned the error of his ways as now he says that option is done and dusted.

This was a speech aimed at the “new working class” Tory voters who Labour have decided are the key to their future success. It was also, as is obvious from their fawning reviews, aimed at the so-called ‘liberal’ media. But, finally, it was a message for members both those on the right and specifically those on the left of the party. Three times SirKeir said “This is a party under new leadership.” For the “new working class” would-be voters this was code for “I’m not Jeremy Corbyn because you didn’t like him”; for the media this was “you can stop attacking we are no longer a threat”; and to the right-wing members it was “rejoice, we won.”

For the left in the party the message was entirely different. It was an exercise in hubris as the finger was clearly pointed at the activists who had supported Jeremy Corbyn and campaigned tirelessly (and imaginatively) for the manifestos in 2017 and 2019. Whilst most people have homed in on the obvious dig: “When you lose an election in a democracy, you deserve to” the more menacing tone was offered in this little throwaway line: “As I promised on my first day as leader we will root out the antisemitism that has infected our party. We’re making progress - and we will root it out, once and for all.” I don’t want to rehearse all the arguments again here but in once again, amplifying the false narrative that Labour is institutionally antisemitic SirKeir is giving a green light to accusations of antisemitism to be used against any left-wing activitists who have too much to say for themselves in right-wing dominated constituencies. Moreover, he has in a single sentence rewritten the Party’s commitment to the cause of the Palestine people. That he was introduced on stage by Ruth Smeeth, one of the most vociferous opponents of Jeremy Corbyn who dislikes being described as in the pay of the CIA although according to Wikileaks she is listed in a US Diplomatic cable as “strictly protect – US informant”, quite whether that is true or not is difficult to assess but it is widely believed by those on the left who have been less than convinced by the antisemitism “crisis” supposedly engulfing the Party.

Labour’s right in parliament, in the media, in the constituencies want us to accept that the General Election in 2019 was lost through Jeremy Corbyn’s inability to win and by an over-ambitious manifesto. As I pointed out previously those policies had widespread support. As Richard Burgon has pointed out: “So our party now needs to go beyond criticising the government’s incompetence – which it has done well and which is clear for all to see – and layout the policies needed to defend people hit hard by this unprecedented public health and jobs crisis. Many of the ideas were in our 2017 and 2019 manifestos – and Keir reflected many of them in his 10 Pledges. These shouldn’t be ditched. Our election defeat was not a rejection of them, but a result of an election dominated by Brexit.”

 

The truth is that there is simply no way that SirKeir and, as Rachael Swindon describes them his “cabinet made up of chancers, career politicians, backstabbers, warmongers, narcissists, bullies and grotesquely inept, morally bankrupt individuals” is going to adopt anything resembling a radical agenda ahead of the next election. Whilst Labour activists, what will be left of them by 2024, would welcome these policies SirKeir and his Shadows don’t believe that the “new working class” will vote for them, and they certainly do not think that the media will nod them through.

 

As if the new direction needed reinforcing on the same day as his “conference” speech SirKeir sacked three Parliamentary Private Secretaries for defying the whip and voting against the overseas operations bill which Shadow Defence Secretary John Healy declared, “creates the risk that the very gravest crimes including torture and other war crimes go unpunished” before abstaining. Meanwhile, Olivia Blake, Nadia Whittome and Beth Winter were sacked from their front bench roles for agreeing with the Campaign Group of Socialist MPs and opposing a bill that as currently written legalises torture. So much for being a great human rights advocate.

 

Until now I have held that for those still in Labour there remains something to fight for. I am not saying that people on the left should leave the Party en masse, but personally I will not be renewing my membership in 12 months time (I’d write and resign if I thought they would care, but I doubt they would even bother to read my letter). I think it is time that people on the left realised that the Labour Party is not a vehicle for socialism, whether there is a better vehicle out there I am yet to be convinced. But, much of the problem with Labour is that it is, at heart, and always has been, an electoral machine. Albeit a not very successful one. As I keep pointing out the majority of people on the right of the party do not stand for anything in particular beyond not being the Conservative Party. They will do and say anything which they think will make them popular and get them elected. Their refusal to acknowledge their own role in undermining Labour over the past 5 years and handing a massive majority to the Tories is not simply myopia but is rooted in a simple dynamic: they don’t like the Tories, but they absolutely loathe the left. The success of the left capturing the party for a couple of years will ensure that the right will tighten things up because they will not allow that to happen again.

 

Staying in the Labour Party doesn’t mean accepting everything SirKeir says or every anti-working class position taken by every Shadow Minister, but it does mean defending them on doorsteps at election times. There will, undoubtedly, be a purge of the left. The idea is to demoralise us so that the banner of socialism can be driven out of Britain. But socialism is a stronger creed than these right wing chancers give it credit for. And, the crisis that they want to manage is not going away. This means that there will be plenty of struggles. Perhaps for those of us sickened by Labour’s right we need to think about how to organise to defend our communities, workplaces and our colleagues both through our trade unions and through extra-parliamentary actions, whilst we leave Labour’s right-wing to stew in their own bile.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Shaping opinion

 Opinion polls play a major role in our political culture and many people see them as an indication of how people actually think about particular issues. They are, these days, often supplemented with focus groups which appear to confirm the results of the opinion polls they are set up to examine. Such is the poverty of ideas in political life these days that politicians often say things like “It’s no good having the correct view on everything if no-one trusts you to put it into practice.” This has become the line being pushed by “senior” Labour politicians as they seek to ditch the policies that made Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto so popular. That particular line was presented by Shadow Treasury Spokesperson Bridget Phillipson during a ‘Labour To Win’ online rally, but we can expect to hear it more and more as Labour desperately try to get back into Government.

 

The problem with relying on “what people think” to guide your policies, is that so-called public opinion is not quite as objective as Labour (and they are not alone in this) would have you believe. But first a disclaimer. If you care to look back through my blogs I have been critical of opinion polls but have also cited them. Does this make me a hypocrite? I should add that I spent the best part of 25 years teaching research methods in higher education. Students would often ask:

“How do I know which polls to trust”, to which I would usually reply:

“In practice, people tend to trust the polls which confirm what they already think, and work hard to disprove the ones they disagree with. For us (I meant social scientists) we should look at the questions asked, the sample and the time frame. In truth we are as prone to confirmation bias as everybody else.”

 

But the major issue with “public opinion” is not that polls have methodological problems, but they also have what we might call ‘ontological’ problems. Aware as I am that people reading this might be resistant to social science jargon I’ll explain what I mean. If you are going to try to measure a thing, any thing, you need to be clear what it is and what would be an appropriate measuring tool. A tape measure is a pretty good measure of length; and either metres or feet tend to be standard. You don’t spend much time, I’m guessing, debating whether a metre is a metre. It just is. Unless you are a philosophy undergraduate and the less said about them the better.

 

So, what is an opinion? We all have them, and they are clearly important, but what they are precisely remains elusive. That is the ‘ontological’ problem. In short ontology refers to the state of being. For our purposes what we can say is that being able to measure ‘opinions’ is not quite the same as being able to define precisely what they are. Now, quite rightly you might be wondering why any of this is important and whether it has any political ramifications?

 

Claire Ainsley, Labour’s new Director of Policy had this to say about polling in a paper in Political Quarterly:

“Public opinion is clearly central to political decision making.”

But, she does not attempt to define what ‘public opinion’ actually means, though to be fair nor do many policy analysts. She does go on to say:

“But the practice of using public opinion in politics is fairly blunt, and has not necessarily been experienced by the electorate as a democratically enriching process.”

 

I don’t disagree with her but she tends to take for granted that the electorate want democracy to be enriching. In truth, whilst this sounds good it is layering concept on concept, because I have no idea at all what a “democratically enriching process” would look like. What she proposes sounds good. Policy which is led by the public. But, on closer examination it is not a move away from public opinion, but a reshaping.

 

“Public attitudes-led policy making suggests that politicians should start with where the public is, and build from there,” as Ainsley puts it. Although this might sound as if policy making simply mirrors the prejudices of the electorate, Ainsley wants to build in checks and balances. Relying on public attitudes, she notes, could lead to the populism popular on the continent but instead she proposes “that it is possible to use public insight and inclusive democratic innovations to develop policy that has public legitimacy, is based on evidence, and is tested amongst the public.”

 

This is important for, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, this view that Labour must get in tune with the electorate is being repeated by the front bench. In the online rally Bridget Phillipson, went on to say:

“..we do need to understand the priorities of the people who haven’t been giving us a hearing. We need to listen, learn and use their language.”

 

This view that all you need to do is listen to ‘ordinary people’ and reflect back their demands in language they recognise is a persistent one in politics, particularly amongst Labour’s right-wing. This leads to the conclusion, as Phillipson puts it that,  “Our language and our framing must reflect the world as our electors see it..” However, beyond saying that Labour should not commit to spending too much or blame austerity for everything there is very little evidence that ordinary voters have been engaged. Rather, the entire speech was a swipe at Labour’s membership which is clearly seen as too left-wing and too out of touch with ordinary voters to engage ordinary people.

 

This brings us back to public opinion. The problem that Labour’s right-wing dominated front bench have is that they seem to believe that there is such a thing as public opinion and that Labour between 2015 and 2019 was not listening to it. They are clearer however what it is not than what it is. According to Philipson the voters Labour needs to speak to, “..don’t follow the news much, they don’t follow Labour politicians on Twitter and they don’t have time to follow the detail of policies that don’t affect them.” These voters, according to this new orthodoxy are disengaged from politics entirely and don’t appear to have much idea what is going on. Nevertheless, we can gauge their views from opinion polls and attitudinal surveys, and when these are translated into policies, these Tory-voting ex-Labour voters will abandon the Tories and sweep Labour to power. It would be laughable if they weren’t so sincere.

 

There has been little attempt by political scientists to understand the nature of political opinions. For data obsessed politicians and journalists opinions are held up as some form of objective measurement of what people believe. The implicit understanding is that opinions are fixed so if, to paraphrase the old saying, the opinion won’t come to the party’s mountain, then the party will have to come to the opinion. The role of politicians in this is not to convince the electorate of anything but simply reflect back to them what they already think. Any sense that politics should be about debate and argument is lost because, especially these days, people reject policies which do not accord with their already formed views.

 

An academic paper by political scientist Stanley Feldman gives a hint of one of the problems of relying on opinions. It is not that opinions do not matter, but that they are related to what he calls core or basic beliefs. As he points out:

“Basic beliefs may affect people’s evaluations of public policy issues not only through their preferences for government action but also in terms of their retrospective evaluations of government performance.”

 

In other words, in formulating policy it is not enough to try to emulate people’s expressed opinions unless you are clear that you are in tune with their core beliefs.

 

Opinions on particular issues, Brexit, immigration, the environment, party leaders etc., are not fixed. Indeed, the truth is that most people do not spend much time thinking about them at all. If presented with an opinion poll they will answer the questions posed, but then in most cases, forget about the issue and go back to catching up on the latest gossip from the world of celebrities or sport. But, whilst opinions on issues may be short-term and malleable, behind these are a set of core beliefs that are more difficult to shift.

 

The problem from Labour’s point of view is that many on the front bench (and their acolytes in the constituencies) are not clear about their own core beliefs. As was indicated in the Ashcroft post-election survey this group overwhelmingly endorsed the proposal that “the most important thing is to win a General Election even if that means making a compromise on principles.” To be honest if you are without principles to start with, those compromises are less painful than they might otherwise be.

 

There is, of course, a fatal flaw for any party pursuing policy on the basis of “starting where people” are at. People’s opinions are often contradictory, political policies cannot afford to be if they are to be credible. People’s opinions can change fairly quickly dependent on events, political parties need to be able to respond to events whilst maintaining their commitment to their policies. But, the biggest flaw is that whilst people want a party to reflect their core beliefs, they also expect a party to lead and to have principled positions. Most people don’t expect a party to simply reflect back their prejudices but expect to be convinced to vote for them. And it needs to be said Tory voters do tend to be more loyal than many Labour ones.

 

If defining ‘opinion’ is difficult, no less so is deciding what represents ‘public’. Politicians often refer to “the public” when they want to show that they are not being partisan. But the public is not an amorphous grouping with one opinion, but is segmented by, amongst other things, gender, ethnicity, class, geography, education, age. These segments are overlapping and people can exist in more than one of them.  Opinions may well differ both between and within segments making attributing an opinion to a particular segment incredibly difficult.

 

Public opinion does not exist in a social vacuum, it is entirely a social construction. Opinion polls do not simply reflect people’s views they help shape them. The way a question is asked, see almost any YouGov poll for evidence, can suggest what people are supposed to be thinking about, even if they do not necessarily tell you what you should think. A question for example such as “Anti-Semitism was a real problem in the Labour Party and the leadership should do more about it”, does more than test your opinion it reinforces the view that Labour has a problem with anti-Semitism (this was part of a battery of items used in an Ashcroft poll).

 

For Labour, if it wants to be credible, the task is to create policies that can transform Britain and then go out and argue for them with passion and commitment. If people disagree have a dialogue with them, be prepared to explain why the policies are in their interests, but accept also that people whose core beliefs are, to put it in simple terms, Conservative, will not be won over to Labour’s cause no matter how much their beliefs are pandered to.

 

In the General Election 2019 over 10.2 million people voted Labour. The immediate task is to ensure that the vote in 2024 does not fall below that. Remember that Ed Miliband’s version of Labour managed 9.3 million, whilst even Tony Blair only managed 9.5 million in 2005. Chasing voters by reflecting back to them beliefs that seem more Tory than Labour will not only fail to win over Tories, but may also lead to demoralisation amongst Labour voters. Of course the base will always vote Labour but that base is not sufficient to deliver a victory, and following the excitement generated by the 2019 manifesto is going to be difficult to enthuse if most of the policies, as seems likely, are sacrificed on the alter of public opinion. Whilst, some right-wing Labour voters may return, the danger is that by appealing to the illusion of public opinion far more left leaning voters, especially younger ones, will simply not bother to vote at all.

 

Let me be clear, I am not saying that Labour cannot win with their current strategy. There is growing disillusionment amongst Tory voters with the handling of the pandemic and that is without the inevitable additional chaos which will be caused by the now highly likely no deal exit from the EU. But winning is not enough. The Tory media will allow a Tory-lite Labour Party into office if they are themselves disillusioned by their own party, but they will also hold a Labour government to its manifesto commitments in a way which they would never do with the Tories. This is especially the case if that manifesto is designed with “conservative” minded voters at its core.

 

Public opinion, such as it is, is able to be manipulated by the establishment so that people without any discernible stake in the system will continue to vote for the continuation of that system. Jeremy Corbyn managed to change the narrative by refusing to play the game. By circumventing the mainstream media for 5 years Labour felt like a real alternative. SirKeir has quickly taken Labour back to ground on which the Tories can always out-perform Labour. For all their talk of going “forwards, we don’t need to reenact the past”, the fact is that Labour is trying to rerun the 1997 Election when Blair won a landslide. That victory, as I have pointed out previously, was as much a result of the collapsing Tory vote as enthusiasm for Labour. If in the midst of the worst pandemic in living memory and it’s atrocious handling Labour is still trailing in the polls, it does not auger well for Labour going forward. The Tories will almost certainly change their leader before the next election, if Labour fail to change theirs then despite having victory handed them on a plate, Labour will, yet again, leave the election feast with only crumbs. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A hundred and one conspiracy theories

 

Is the novel coronavirus (COV-Sars-2) real? Is it a risk to most people? Are you more likely to be killed in a car accident than die from Covid-19? Or more likely to die in the bath? Was the lockdown a waste of time which cost lives in additional suicides and cancer cases? Should Britain have pursued a ‘herd immunity’ strategy as was the Governments initial plan and modelled themselves on Sweden?

 

Back in March, Sweden’s apparently more relaxed approach appeared to be working. CNBC reported Anders Tegnell, the Public Health Agency epidemiologist in charge of the strategy, as saying:

“Sweden has gone mostly for voluntary measures because that’s how we’re used to working. And we have a long tradition that it works rather well.”

 

Opponents of both the lockdown and mask wearing in the U.K. have seized upon the Swedish approach as evidence that the approach adopted by almost every other country in the World was wrong, if not part of some evil conspiracy to rob them of their freedom.  Sweden’s approach, whilst eschewing a formal lockdown was not quite as laissez faire as its supporters might claim. It relied on responsible social distancing coupled with home working, restrictions on bars and restaurants and the closure of colleges and universities. What seemed to make the policy workable was that the Swedes, unlike the British, have a strong sense of social responsibility.

Fast forward to June 2020. The British Medical Journal had an article by Heba Habib, which claimed that “Sweden’s public was supportive of the strategy 

but is now paying a heavy price.” The Swedish strategy was not one of pretending that the virus does not exist, nor of seeing it as an invented disease by some shadowy organisation as conspiracy theorists would have you believe, but rather was to develop a ‘herd immunity’, the same strategy which the British government were pursuing until they lost their nerve.

 

As Habib notes the early success of the strategy was quickly overtaken by events. “Sweden has the largest number of cases and fatalities in Scandinavia—around 37,000 confirmed cases at the time of writing, compared with its neighbours Denmark, Norway, and Finland which have 12,000, 8,000, and 7,000 cases, respectively. All three neighbouring countries adopted a lockdown approach early in the pandemic, which they are now slowly lifting. All three have since re-opened their borders, but not to Sweden.”

 

Of course since then the numbers have only got worse. As of Tuesday September 8^th Sweden had 85,707 cases, Denmark 18,356, Norway 11,560, and Finland 8,337. Sweden has now recorded 5,836 deaths, a rate closer to the UK’s than any of its Scandinavian neighbours. Herd immunity, it seemed was failing, but this is irrelevant to the anti-lockdown brigade who have no great interest in herd immunity preferring to believe that the virus is an invented disease aimed at preventing them from going to the pub.

 

Essentially, to reach herd immunity requires something above 60% (some experts say as high as 80%, though at least one person has claimed 20% but that is a little fanciful) having acquired immunity. This is done either through a vaccination programme (there is, of course, no vaccine for COVID 19) or by recovering from the virus and developing antibodies which protect you from a further attack. Researchers from Imperial College, London and the University of Oxford have examined data from a number of sources and “the researchers found little evidence for herd immunity and concluded that the decline in cases and deaths was a result of lockdowns, behavioural shifts, social distancing and other interventions.”

 

So contrary to the theory that herd immunity could be reached without a lockdown, there is currently no evidence that anywhere, including Sweden, has achieved herd immunity, and that it is, in fact lockdown measures that have slowed down the spread of cases.

 

There is a fatal flaw in the herd immunity strategy. No, not the lack of a viable vaccine (the latest miracle cure is currently suspended due to a severe adverse reaction in a test subject), but the fact that most people do not want to contract the virus. Indeed, social distancing is designed to prevent herd immunity, so there is a logical flaw at the heart of the World’s approach to the virus. That said, the idea that herd immunity was a viable option was not widely held by scientists who have spent a lifetime studying viruses (one assumes they know slightly more than an oversized boot boy wrapped in a Union Jack). I searched in vain for a reputable expert who was advocating herd immunity as a strategy and could not find a single one. Even Anders Teggers, the Swedish advocate of no-lockdown has taken a less rigid approach as the Swedish model has run into trouble. In an interview with Sverige Radio he conceded:

“If we were to encounter the same disease again, knowing exactly what we know about it today, I think we would settle on doing something in between what Sweden did and what the rest of the world has done.”

An exception is Nobel Laureate Michael Levitt who has received some attention from Covid-deniers impressed by the fact that they appear to have not only an expert on their side, but one with a Nobel prize to his name.  He has claimed that in Britain the government was hoodwinked by epidemiologists whose predictions were wildly inaccurate. Indeed, the team from UCL predicted around 50,000 deaths. The current figure is around 41,614 (worldometers.info), or according to death certificate data, 51,740 (ONS). He has argued that lockdowns have caused more deaths than they saved by increasing suicides and and cancer deaths. 

 

It might also be pointed out that although Professor Levitt is indeed a Nobel prize winner this was for his work as a chemist not for his expertise on virology or epidemiology. Not that this means he is not entitled to an opinion, nor that he cannot be right. However, the fact that he is a Nobel Laureate is used to give his mathematical modelling a credibility it might lack if he was a painter and decorator from Port Talbot who professed a love of numbers.

 

A search of the web reveals what appears to be scientific evidence supporting the view that the lockdown has caused more deaths than it has saved. But, this evidence, on closer examination turns out to be less conclusive than its advocates like to believe. For example, in June psychiatrist Leo Sher published an article in ‘QJM: an international journal of medicine’ in which he proposed that Covid 19 would lead to an increase in suicide rates. Looking at a range of sources he speculated that:

“Social isolation, anxiety, fear of contagion, uncertainty, chronic stress and economic difficulties may lead to the development or exacerbation of stress-related disorders and suicidality in vulnerable populations including individuals with pre-existing psychiatric disorders, low-resilient persons, individuals who reside in high COVID-19 prevalence areas and people who have a family member or a friend who has died of COVID-19.”

 

The key words here are “may lead”, and of course he may prove to be right. But this was translated by anti-lockdown activists as evidence of a 200% increase in suicides due to lockdown. The latest suicide figures for England however for Quarter 2, which is the period of the lockdown show a decline in the rate of suicide to its lowest level since 2001 a rate 0f 6.9 per 100k compared to the lowest ever Q2 rate of 8.7 in 2007.

 

Similarly, a paper in The Lancet by Maringe et al., predicted that there would be an increase in cancer deaths due to the suspension of screening programmes. Their findings make sobering reading:

“..we estimate a 7·9–9·6% increase in the number of deaths due to breast cancer up to year 5 after diagnosis, corresponding to .. 329–358 additional deaths. For colorectal cancer, we estimate ..1534–1592 additional deaths; for lung cancer..1343–1401 additional deaths, a 4·8–5·3% increase; and for oesophageal cancer..336–348 additional deaths, 5·8–6·0% increase up to 5 years after diagnosis.”

 

The key words here are “we estimate”. This is not actual deaths, but estimates based on a range of factors which may or may not turn out to be accurate. I am not saying that these “experts” are wrong, they may well turn out to be correct. Of note though is that they were not advocating a retreat from lockdown but rather:

“..the urgent need for policy interventions to mitigate the predicted additional cancer deaths resulting from delays in diagnosis.”

 

In these cases, professionals with a vested interest in their specialisms are suggesting that as the lockdown proceeded it was necessary to take account of the wider implications for healthcare. They were not intending to provide ammunition for a group of people who refuse to wear masks who suddenly, and against type, have developed a concern for the health of  people who may be worse off than themselves.

 

In addition to these scientific papers Covid-deniers have found support for at least one of their theories in the weekly published death statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics. These provide death statistics according to death certificate classification in addition to a 5-year average. It is this average which has provided the source for some wild speculation. 

 

For week 35 (28^th August) the total number of deaths is recorded as 9,032. The 5-year average is 8,241. The number of Covid deaths is 101, and the number of deaths attributed to pneumonia/flu is 795. This makes it look as one Twitter user claimed that there are 8 times more people dying from flu and pneumonia than from Covid. It is also the case that the excess deaths (the actual deaths minus the 5-year average) is 791. In which case, so it is said, rather than reimposing lockdown measures it is time to abandon them completely. 

 

The first thing to say about these figures is that their interpretation is not as easy as the average social media user might think. For starters deaths from pneumonia/flu are not actually deaths from flu or pneumonia at all, but instances where these are mentioned on the death certificate. As the stats note:

“Note: Deaths could possibly be counted in both causes presented. If a death had an underlying respiratory cause and a mention of COVID-19 then it would appear in both counts.”

So, at least one of the figures could be double counted. My own Father died last December after living with dementia for four years, but it was pneumonia which eventually killed him.

 

More importantly the 5-year average is being treated as a reliable indicator of what the number of deaths ‘should be’ in any week. But it does not take much thinking about this to realise that there is no particular reason why deaths should follow a pattern set by an average. The number of deaths in week 35 have ranged in that 5 year period from 7,865 to 9,036. That higher figure is remarkably close to the figure recorded for 2020. Indeed, since lockdown was introduced, excluding Covid deaths there have been 14 weeks where the number of deaths is below the 5-year average, compared to 10 where it has been higher. This pattern would be the similar with or without Covid.  In most weeks the death figures are well within a range that might be expected.  So, any speculation about an excess figure based on the average is just that – speculation.

 

The danger is that public discourse becomes so dominated by a small minority highjacking the genuine concerns of ordinary people that these kinds of papers and statistics become abused to promote an anti-health agenda. This is clearly not what the authors intended. Incidentally, the statistics for cancer deaths are released about two years behind so we won’t know whether there is an increase in deaths due to the lockdown until at least 2022.

 

Most considered opinion on the spread of viruses suggests that the only way to stop the spread of a virus which goes from person to person is to limit contact between people. Of course, the death rate might have come down anyway. But, nobody knows that anymore than I know whether cancer deaths will rise due to the lockdown. It is plausible that the environmental affects of the lockdown (a lowering of workplace stress, a reduction in traffic pollution) could actually cause cancer rates to fall during the lockdown. But, we will never know for certain.

 

What we do know is that wherever the lockdown has been lifted the number of cases has started to rise. Right now we are in the midst of mini-epidemics fuelled by foreign travel and school returns which have seen local lockdowns imposed in Bolton, Birmingham and Caerphilly. But this assumes that we know what a case is. Again, there is plenty of misinformation being circulated on the web, but according to the American Centre for Disease Control:

“A case definition is a set of standard criteria for classifying whether a person has a particular disease, syndrome, or other health condition.”

 

There are some standard uses of cases allowing for cross comparison, but there is no single definition of a case. Which means that attempts by anti-Covid campaigners to argue that a case only refers to somebody hospitalised as per standard epidemiological practice is pure bunkum. The definition of a confirmed case, as defined by the World Health Organisation is:

“A person with laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 infection, irrespective of clinical signs and symptoms.”

Nobody is simply counting anybody who self reports as a case. To be a case you need to have tested positive and that positive test must be confirmed by a laboratory.

The attempt by anti-Covid groups to suggest that both the number of cases and the death rates are lower than published (in reality they are likely to be higher) is part of a campaign to present Covid 19 as of little consequence. An anti-lockdown conspiracist told me that I was more likely to die in a road accident than from Covid. Not so. The latest figures for road accident deaths in England are from 2019 and total 1,870 (according to the RAC). I have also been told that deaths from Covid are less likely than being hit by lightning (hardly, there was only one death from a lightning strike in the U.K. last year), or that I was more likely to die in the bath (unlikely as I only have a shower, but whilst there are no statistics for drowning in the bath, official stats reveal that 321 people drowned in the U.K. last year). An oft repeated claim is that more people die from flu. That is not true. There were 1,692 deaths from flu in England last year, but like Covid 19, flu is a contagious disease, which is more than can be said for drowning, crashing your car, being hit by lightning, or even cancer or suicide.

 

As an aside I was in hospital during February and March and whilst there a patient on my ward was diagnosed with flu. I suddenly found myself on an isolation ward and all visitors had to wear masks as did I. But here is the point. I was not happy being in a ward with a person with flu, but I was not terrified that I would die if I caught it. I just worried that my operation would be held up whilst I recovered. I can tell you however that had that man had Covid 19 symptoms I would have been extremely worried because as contagious as flu might be I know that it is unlikely it will kill me (I usually get flu symptoms about once a year), I am not so confident that I would survive Covid 19. I also know that for some people Covid 19 has long term health affects, I am not aware that is the case with flu.

 

The majority of the population in the U.K. support the lockdown measures as can be seen in a number of opinion polls carried out since it began.

The truth is that those who are campaigning against lockdown measures, social distancing and mask wearing have no great interest in either Covid 19 or freedom.  Those opposing the lockdown tend to be right wingers who are using some public disquiet over the handling of the pandemic to recruit people to their perverted ideologies. Whilst they happily quote statistics, some real some imagined, few of them have the intellectual skills necessary to understand the papers on which they are based. An article in the journal ‘Personality and Individual Differences’ based on a survey of 640 individuals found a positive correlation between believing conspiracy theories related to Covid 19 and low educational attainment. It is this demographic who were most likely to vote for Brexit, and also most likely to support the Conservatives in the last General Election. People attracted to the right tend to be less empathetic and less accepting of change, and very often come from deprived backgrounds where they have been subjected to abuse. Of course, there are those amongst the Covid deniers who are perfectly capable of understanding statistics and are choosing to use them for their own ends. Sometimes those ends are overtly political (and not always right-wing), but sometimes just an irritation that a Worldwide pandemic has interfered with what they considered ‘normal life’.

 

What we now have is a perfect storm. Politicians in government, clearly way out of their depth, sending at best mixed and at worst muddled messages. A body politic in the U.K. and USA which has shifted right wards, and a pandemic that has as its best form of defence restrictions on personal liberty. We should remember that for all the noise made by the conspiracy theorists they remain a minority. But rather than making the mistake that the People’s Vote campaign made and calling our opponents thick and uncouth, we should recognise that if confronted with evidence the less committed can be shifted away from the right. The vacuum has been left by established parties (particularly the Labour Party in the U.K.) in thrall to the right-wing dominated media and terrified to speak out lest they lose the support of voters who never supported them in the first place.

 

Sars-Covid-2 is real. It is potentially lethal. It is most definitely not a plot to enslave people. Those arguing such are claiming for the lockdown precisely what they would like to do. The internet and social media have given them a platform greater than they could previously have dreamed of, but the numbers are relatively small. My greatest scorn is not for Covid deniers, per se, but for academics such as Michael Levitt who for some reason known only to their own inflated ego have chosen to use their status to promote theories (and that is all they are, theories) which have the result of undermining public health measures.

 

The left in democracies have always seen education as a key to their role. In this current crisis, with national figures and the media gleefully repeating conspiracy theories as if they are fact we have an even greater imperative to try to help our fellow citizens see through the fog. Covid 19 cannot be defeated politically or by an act of will. It is a health issue that requires a public health approach. Hygiene and safe distancing are what we all can do whilst those with the skill work on developing a vaccine. Stay safe.

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