Unpacking the false narrative and real motivations behind 'cancel culture'

As fallout over the Harper's magazine 'cancel culture' letter grows, it's worth noting some significant response pieces helping to cut through the seeming tangle of argument, positions and agendas around it.

In particular, Jonathan Cook offers a key dissection of the real motives and issues behind the letter.

But first, there's the 'issue' of Noam Chomsky's inclusion amongst the list of signatories to consider.

Citing and siting Chomsky

At the outset, Cook accepts Chomsky's apparent reasons for signing the letter, in contrast to others on this list:

"Chomsky, importantly, is defending free speech for all, because he correctly understands that the powerful are only too keen to find justifications to silence those who challenge their power. Elites protect free speech only in so far as it serves their interests in dominating the public space."

Still, for Cook, this doesn't alter the problematic effect of Chomsky's signature in providing 'cover', or 'being used', for the kind of anti-left agenda being propagated by many others on the list. 

For Cook: "He made a mistake. He’s fallible."

Yet, as Cook makes clear, and clarifies in a second update to his article, this isn't, or shouldn't really be, about Chomsky at all, but about the letter itself, and what's driving it:

"Really, Chomsky shouldn’t be the issue. The issue should be that a bunch of centrists and right-wingers used this letter to try to reinforce a narrative designed to harm the left, and lay the groundwork for further curbs on its access to social media."

This, indeed, is the key point.

It can be added here that while there's legitimate discussion to be had over Chomsky's signing, leftists should really be invoking an actual Chomskian principle in not getting overly detained by it.

A past example from Chomsky himself (invoked in a more direct way by Cook in his piece) can be applied here:

'Suppose I criticise Iran. What impact does that have? The only impact it has is in fortifying those who want to carry out policies I don’t agree with, like bombing'. 

By the same token, why help critically amplify Chomsky's name in the Harper's letter rather than highlight and challenge the main signatories and motives behind the letter itself?

Why give the right and centrists, including many of those same signatories, the added benefit of seeing their claims go unchallenged by diverting criticism away from them and towards Chomsky?

In short, the citing of Chomsky in this letter is less important here than the siting of him.

In the aftermath of the letter, Chomsky shows no regrets about his inclusion, noting the letters of support he's had from left academics and others fearful of the toxic climate of 'cancelling'.

But this is just more confirmation of his bona fide motivations in permitting his name to be used, as a true defender of free speech - a point, again, acknowledged by Cook in his piece.

Yet, at the same time - as Cook also rightly insists - that shouldn't inhibit us from noting the potentially harmful ways in which that inclusion can, indeed, be used.

And, as Chomsky himself no doubt understands, much of the right surely will use his inclusion in the letter as a means to attack the left.

Yet, Chomsky's vast body of work and lifetime effort towards truth and justice is sufficient evidence of his own progressive intent here.

Again, whether Chomsky was mistaken or not in lending his name here is not really the key issue. We can be sure, however, that his basic reasons for doing so still stands moral mountains higher than many of the figures on this list.

As with Cook, this writer won't be 'cancelling' Chomsky any time soon.

In contrast, you're highly unlikely to find many of the others on this list lauding Chomsky or his work, even after lending his name to their 'cause'. 

Indeed, it's so reflective of the posturing Harper's letter and it's lofty signatories that the most effectively marginalised and 'cancelled' figure of all by the same kind of liberal 'free-speechers' over so many years has been Chomsky himself.

A re-run of 'fake news'

The 'cancel culture' letter being peddled by many of these signatories and their proponents is reminiscent of how the whole 'fake news' framing was originated, embraced and driven by the same kind of entitled liberals. 

A large element of this involved Guardian, BBC and other established journalists fearing that online media and citizen journalism was undermining and exposing their own privileged 'right' to that long-held domain. 

The same kind of attack by the same kind of people is underway again here against the left. It's the same posturing attempt to 'retain' the moral high ground, using 'free speech' and 'persecution' tropes this time to push back and suppress real radical and alternative voices, most notably those calling out that very liberal entitlement.

Cook makes a similar kind of point in yet a third clarifying update to his piece:

"This letter won’t help the left because “cancel culture” is being framed – by this letter, by Trump, by the media – as a “loony lefty” problem. It is a new iteration of the “politically correct gone mad” discourse, and it will be used in exactly the same way."

In many cases, as with Rowling, it's also a rearguard 'vanity' response, with liberal celebrities using this 'halt illiberalism' line to push back against those criticising their own personal political positions. 

Ali Abunimah also comments on the "monumental hypocrisy" of such people in even claiming to be 'cancelled', or threatened with it, given the widespread platform they are still given across 'mainstream' media.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez makes similar valid points on entitlement and who is really being "cancelled" here.

The real test for many on this list and their exponents is how ready they are to take up much more difficult positions in defence of really purged figures like incarcerated journalist Julian Assange or the hounded Labour Party member Chris Williamson.

Very few of these figures, or Harper's itself, appear willing to stand up for greater discussion of taboo subjects like the right to criticise Israel and Zionism without being witch-hunted and expelled.

From the right-wing Frum to centrist Rowling, these are already highly privileged figures who are now getting an even more elevated platform to cast their complaints and views.

Many others, in contrast, are consigned to the silenced fringes. Consider, for example, Jackie Walker, another Labour member denigrated, removed and anonymised, with no support from the kind of celebrated signatories to this letter. 

Cancelling power

'Cancel culture' is not an encouragement to more expansive speech. It's actually a discouragement to those seeking to mount more action-based challenges to power from below. 

Are we now to inhibit or stop people calling out Blair and his accomplice in crime, Alastair Campbell? 

To do so is not just about wanting such figures 'cancelled'. It's about them being held to proper account, brought to justice. And a key part of this is about challenging a system of power that protects and grants them ongoing platforms. 

Which means ultimately, for any serious leftist, that this actually is about cancelling outlets like the Guardian as we seek to build truly independent and system-changing media.

As the backlash against the Harper's letter intensifies, discussion around 'cancel culture' isn't just exposing many of the signatories and their motives, it's also serving to put some of the 'media left' itself under new scrutiny. 

For example, Billy Bragg has written a response article strongly critical of the Harper's piece, making a similar set of valid points about the privileged nature of the signatories and their attempts to push back against a new generational movement of political and media voices.

Yet, as pointed out by Media Lens, we have the irony, some might say hypocrisy, here of Bragg placing his piece not at any such new social media space, truly reflective of that shift, but at the Guardian, an organ of that very 'older', more privileged media establishment, one that has not only sought to slap down alternative media voices, but actually led the cancel Corbyn agenda, and, as part of that smear campaign, sought to cancel out any discussion critical of Israel as 'antisemitic'. 

Lamentably, Bragg cannot even see the paradox of his consistent endorsement and support for the Guardian or its deep culpabilities here.

Owen Jones is an even more prominent leftist denouncing the whole 'cancel culture' line, again correctly pointing out that this is the powerful defending their privileged platforms and positions against new social media and marginalised voices. 

But, again, Jones himself is solidly ensconced within that same privileged world through his own tenure at, and relentless defence of, the Guardian. 

Jones was also part of the Labour-Guardian cabal that helped purge people like Williamson and Walker, and openly greeted the removal of Asa Winstanley, while eagerly defending the virulently anti-Corbyn Jewish Labour Movement. 

Again, like Bragg, Jones refuses to see or acknowledge both his own and the Guardian's key parts in that much more brutal and systematic cancelling.

All too typically, Jones has now blocked Williamson for daring to respond back to these latest criticisms of him - just as he has blocked Media Lens and critically reasoned others.

Again, like Media Lens, Cook is well seasoned in exposing and challenging this kind of 'cancelling'.

Feeding, exposing and using the narrative

There is, of course, the more familiar paradox here of 'narrative surge': that by actually engaging the Harper's letter, we are giving 'cancel culture' the very enhanced airing it seeks. 

Yet the inevitable hype and consequent opportunity to challenge the letter and its backers can also serve to expose that narrative itself. 

In showing how those who already have the highest platform are the ones being granted an even higher one, it's possible to subvert both that entitlement and the narrative supporting it.

The same exposure of that framing also serves the vital purpose of opening up for critical examination many of those doing the 'subverting', in particular those 'guardian leftists' acting as the 'vanguards' of independent media and in 'defence' of the purged while authenticating the very platforms and institutions engaged in protecting the entitled, purging so many dissenters and nullifying radical change.

Engagement in that debate may, again, seem like the very divisive outcome desired by right and centrist exponents of this letter. But it does serve to bring this much more comprehensive and crucial set of issues out in the open.

All round, that amounts to a pretty healthy, critical and constructive 'use' of this letter and the real issues around it.

But there's a further vital point to be made in this regard. Amid the fire and heat over this debate, even as we assertively argue our corners, it's easy to lose sight of the truly invaluable array of people and outlets, like Cook, Media Lens and others, serving to illuminate our understanding of such issues and how we best channel that awareness. 

Unlike the loaded, sanitised and conformist version of framing and 'analysis' handed down by the 'mainstream', this is a medium and process to be utilised and cherished, a very real learning process helping us to think, and re-think, through such difficult questions and how best to action them. And, of course, it's precisely these kind of writers, this set of resources, this capacity for tolerant, reasoned and system-changing debate that power is really intent on not just 'cancelling' but truly silencing.

Lofty liberals only reveal their own limitations and intolerance in calling for an end to 'cancel culture'

There's been wide reaction to a letter at Harper's magazine signed by varying notable figures calling for a greater defence of open speech and an end to 'cancel culture'.

As the piece states:

"The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought."

Noam Chomsky, a longstanding advocate of universal free speech, is included as a key signatory to the letter. 

But his name sits alongside an array of more liberal voices with rather less rightful claim as defenders of truly fearless speech.

Chomsky is essentially correct in his basic premise about the fundamental right to free and critical speech. 

This may sit uncomfortably with many leftists, notably those more inclined towards varying forms of  'identity politics'. 

But Chomsky's imperative of free speech for all should be seen neither as a liberal clarion call, nor as an undermining of any radical politics or movements.

And, to be absolutely clear here, Chomsky is not defending racists, the far-right or, as even more ignorant charges suggest, Holocaust deniers. Nor does he defend any right to hate speech or incitement to violence.

But the real issue here is not actually with Chomsky or his position on free speech. 

Rather, it's the contrived way in which the letter itself is being presented as a 'noble liberal backlash' against 'intimidation' of those wishing open discussion.

And, as the great liberal alarm call over 'fake news' goes relentlessly on, this false narrative has even deeper implications for how the very 'problem' of free speech is being framed, and who has the right to frame it. 

Much more alarmingly, we're seeing how big social media corporations are now acquiring the power and 'moral authority' to decide what views are permissible - all in insidious agreement with elite state forces. 

Ban one from the right and 'balance' it up with exclusion of one from the left. All seemingly neutral, responsible and benign. Yet before you know it, big swathes of progressive voices are suddenly gone, leaving us with a vacuous landscape of safe, compliant liberal centrism.

Chomsky himself would certainly recognise and warn against that danger to free speech, unlike, one suspects, many others on this list.

A good litmus test for people like Frum, Ignatieff, Nelson, Rowling, Atwood and many other 'free-speechers' here is how they use their voices on Israel. 

How many of these 'guardians' of open, expansive speech are up in arms over the right to criticise Israel, or are seeking to amplify Palestinian voices? 

How many here are openly questioning the growing taboo and climate of fear around even mentioning Israel's crimes and its apartheid state? 

Even if they don't uphold Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) against Israel, how many are ready to call for open and expansive discussion of the legitimate claims behind it? 

This is real cancel culture.

How many of these figures, so apparently concerned over the closure of probing discourse, are worried enough to condemn the Labour Party's McCarthyite witch-hunting of members who question the doctrine of Zionism? 

How many are calling out the dark alignment of forces within that party now purging anyone who dares critically discuss Israel's ethnic cleansing, settler colonialism and ongoing violations of international law? 

Chomsky does. Consistently. Do any of the others?

Remember all that liberal je suis Hebdo breast-beating in supposed defence of all political views, however difficult? In France itself, you're likely to get locked up now for condemning Israel.

Nor are you likely to hear many of the figures on this list speak up for Julian Assange, or call out the rest of the 'tolerant liberal media's' effective closure of discussion around both his vital journalistic exposures or his ongoing persecution. 

Chomsky, of course, again stands as a consistent and moral voice in this and all such cases.

Yet while Chomsky has earned the moral right to put his name to any letter on free speech, we're also entitled to wonder about the very usefulness of placing it here alongside such figures, and on a liberal  platform which itself serves to manage and control the parameters of 'dangerous' views and discussion. 

Publications like Harper's, as with almost all liberal 'mainstream' media, readily laud 'open, challenging speech' while effectively filtering, through 'in-house' selection, editorial omission and other such means the permissible range of 'difficult' topics and radical voices.

Paradoxically, and unfortunately, Chomsky's honourable position on free speech has been used here as kind of fig leaf to mask this publication's, and the wider liberal media's, own effective limiting of radical discourse.

It is pure liberal posturing.

The real issue for expansive, fearless discussion here is the vital part that safe, conformist, establishment-serving media and academia at large play in toning down dissent, incorporating radical movements and policing output which exposes that very liberal 'authority' and its claims to speak as the 'principal guardian of our freedoms'. 

The career interests at stake in the perpetuation of this self-promoting illusion are, of course, considerable.

All that much more vital discussion has been cancelled out by the faux liberal-generated narrative around this story. 

While bewailing 'cancel culture', such liberal voices have been only too ready to cancel, de-platform and ghost radical voices. 

And the most disgracefully ghosted and marginalised of them all over the years has been Chomsky himself.

Many such big names, again with the notable exception of Chomsky, have been all too willing to throw progressives and the causes they wish to raise under the bus. 

Again, one only need look at coy journalists at outlets like the Guardian in working relentlessly to cancel Corbyn and his left agenda, and using the 'antisemitism' smear to cancel out so many decent critics of Israel.

The easy liberal claim here is that we should all be striving for more brave discussion and debate. 

But where is their boldness of action in examining their own elite consensus, resisting McCarthyite culture and defending the truly cancelled?

Covid-19: UK Government 'back on track', tragically late and heading for political derailment

Today sees the return of trace, test and isolate, an essential service in viral containment consistently advocated by the World Health Organisation.

Test and Trace is being rolled out in England, with a coming version in Wales, and another already running in Northern Ireland.

From today, Scotland will also have its own system. 

Test and Protect, as it will be known, brings back into use a proven contact tracing approach abandoned on 12 March by the Scottish Government as it fell into joint-policy line with the UK.

Collating and using localised data - all overseen by NHS regional health boards, rather than the private-run, centralised system being rolled out in England - it offers a vital front-line tool in virus suppression.

It comes a day before phase one of relaxed lockdown restrictions come into force in Scotland, a much more guarded and gradual easing than that already being green-lighted to worrying effect by Boris Johnson in England.

We must now hope that, combined with continued public vigilance, this key intervention will be decisive in helping to stem any major second virus wave, particularly as we head towards the winter months and new flu season.

Yet, for all this welcome shift, it's tragic to think that fully 11 weeks have now passed, with a damning death rate and over 60,000 lives lost, since that fateful Thursday on 12 March when contact tracing was discontinued by the UK Government.

And we cannot condemn that UK decision and its disastrous impact without asking why the Scottish Government felt compelled to follow and participate in that fatal policy.

It seems that Nicola Sturgeon's approval ratings can only go up as the 'R' number in Scotland comes down. 

And, alongside Trace and Protect, her 'Stay Home' and other public awareness messages have been much more clearly and effectively conveyed.

But so too was her advice back in March to dispense with contact tracing. Saying clearly and consistently that we should adhere to a mistaken policy only reinforces false adherence to it. 

That deeply-mistaken UK alignment and policy message might return yet to trouble Sturgeon, a recognition intimated even in her own daily mitigations that, 'yes, we've all made mistakes along the way'.

But whatever the political fallout to come, it's Johnson's own government that will be most duly haunted by this fatal policy shift.

And, as with the UK's lead in abandoning containment, so too was it's late call on lockdown that led to many thousands of avoidable deaths. 

As Professor Tim Spector from King's College London has now concluded from the largest Covid-19 data analysis of transmissions due to large gatherings, "people will have probably died prematurely" because of this decision.

Critical examples included the opening of the Cheltenham race event on 10 March and Liverpool's Champions League match the following evening which saw 3000 fans allowed to travel from then virus-ravaged Madrid. 

As this study now shows, both locations became major virus 'hotspots' shortly after these events.

Yet, as late as 16 March, Scotland's own National Clinical Director, Jason Leitch, was still defending the policy that had permitted attendance at mass concerts and football matches. 

Again, why had the Scottish Government been following this UK line, against all the contrary advice of the World Health Organisation?

We need transparency on the entire chain of policy-making here all the way back to Number 10 as it pushed the whole 'herd immunity' line.

And as the spectacle of Dominic Cummings and 'Durhamgate' continues, it's important to see the more crucial part he played with Johnson in formulating this 'Darwinian' policy.

It's this corrosive relationship that may provide some of the deeper reasons for Johnson's dogged refusal to ditch Cummings. 

What was Cummings doing at the heart of a decision-making process that should have been driven only by science and experienced public health advisors?

The story concocted by Cummings over his lockdown road trip, and signed-off by Johnson, is plainly risible. It's a damning example of rules for us, 'exceptions' for them, and will only encourage people to dismiss those rules and help spread the virus.

But it's not even enough here to say that Cummings should be sacked.

The much bigger issue is his role in the policy itself, the outcome of which should really be treated as a major criminal, rather than resigning, matter.

And wasn't it perversely convenient that, amid the great media 'interrogation' of Cummings over Durham, no journalist used this rare chance to probe that dark policy collusion? This is the real story the media should be tracking and tracing.

An entire populace, from life-saving health workers to those most vulnerable souls in our care homes, have been exposed, disregarded and discarded as 'collateral' losses. Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson stand jointly responsible for that policy.

As John Pilger so damningly writes: "Britain's Covid suffering is a crime against humanity".

And, of course, we have some major precedents for such co-criminality and uncaring abrogation of life.

David Cameron and George Osborne hatched an austerity programme that, according to a major report, led to 120,000 excess deaths in this wealth-laden country.

Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell between them cooked-up the policy and cover narrative for the mass slaughter in Iraq. Now they're both back on the news platforms peddling their 'virtuous anger' and 'country-saving advice'.

And now Johnson and Cummings are trying to spin, deceive and divert attention from their own major crime scene.

Here again we see the truly awesome mendacity of elites attempting to save their own political skins and tawdry 'reputations'.

With Cummings now a derided figure and support for Johnson collapsing, it seems that the emergency impasse of the pandemic itself is the only thing now saving this government from falling completely.

Denounced at every level, including senior religious figures and many within its own party ranks, it stands utterly disgraced.

Yet, like the dark prevalence of the virus, it carries defiantly on. And despite brooding public discontent, it seems to be surviving on wider feelings of weariness, resignation and, like Johnson's populist lockdown relaxations, any feeble signal of a return to 'normality'.

We may have reached a point of 'peak shock' over the fatality numbers and the devastation for so many bereaved families. Even as that curve flattens, the scandal that so many people are still dying each day now barely seems to register. 

Perhaps the very onslaught of graphs, country comparisons and wall-to-wall coverage has partly inured, or desensitised, people to the ugly scale not only of mass deaths but the criminal policies behind them.

Still, we continue on optimistic track and in good human hope that things will soon be okay. 

But, as our understanding of the virus and its effects grows, so too must our comprehension of the dark forces, policies and decisions that allowed this terrible calamity to happen. 

Tracing and dealing with that level of political negligence and criminality will pose as many challenges as tracking and checking the virus. 

And, beyond all the scientific and public health lessons for Scotland, the political ones on the urgent need to de-link and fast track a new route forward should now be glaringly obvious.

From containment to mitigation: March 12 and the lurch to 'catastrophe'

The UK government's multiple failures over the Covid-19 crisis, including its shocking negligence in planning and preparation, should be the subject of the most probing and critical inquiry. 

However, as Professor of Global Health at UCL, and former World Health Organisation director, Anthony Costello insists, key answers need to be provided right now on the chain of advisory discussions and policy decisions that went on within the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), including the presence of non-science-based figures.

And high on that list of required public information should be the sequence of events that led to the UK government's abandoning of 'contact, trace and test' on 12 March, a central part of the so-called 'containment' strategy.

As Costello notes:

"This question about testing policy is far more than a matter of bureaucratic sophistry. The government’s decision on 12 March, when the UK had 590 confirmed active cases and nine deaths, led to the uncontained explosion of the Covid-19 epidemic. Imperial College London researchers have estimated the baseline R value – the rate at which people are passing on infections to others – at that time to have been just below four. Between 12 and 24 March, when the national lockdown started, cases exploded. By 28 March, Imperial researchers estimate that more than 1.8 million people in Britain were infected. The official death toll in the UK from Covid-19 stands at nearly 35,000 people, though estimates from the Financial Times put the number of lives lost at more than 62,000."

This comment from Devi Sridhar, Professor and Chair of Global Public Health at Edinburgh Medical School, and Director of Global Health Gov, reinforces the point with alarming effect:

"I’m not sure the British public understand the health, educational, economic & social implications of abandoning containment on 12th March. Who made that decision and on what basis? Truly catastrophic."

Sridhar also laid out the vital importance of this containment policy in an article on 23 March, lamenting even at that point how the UK had "lost the window of containment several weeks ago":

"The UK’s head start in managing the outbreak continued as our confirmed case count remained lower than our neighbours’. However, on 12 March, Boris Johnson announced that all minor testing and contact tracing would stop and passive self-isolation would be introduced for those with symptoms, all part of a herd immunity strategy supposedly endorsed by the “best science”."

It is clear from the considered analyses of Sridhar, Costello and many more notable public health figures that the UK's decision to move from an effective policy of containment to one of mitigation on 12 March was a monumental mistake resulting in mass, unnecessary loss of lives.

And despite Nicola Sturgeon's subsequent 'policy distancing' from Boris Johnson, we must also ask why Scotland went along with abandoning that well-regarded approach.

On 21 March, Allyson Pollock, Clinical Professor of Public Health at Newcastle University, wrote a detailed letter to the Scottish government pointing out the dire implications of not having a comprehensive contact trace policy in place, and urging them to do so:

"I am writing as a public health physician who is increasingly concerned about the apparent failure to implement fundamental public health measures to address the COVID-19 outbreak – specifically, community contact tracing and testing – and about what seems to be one of the knock-on effects of this failure, namely the blanket closure of schools. Tracing and testing of contacts, isolation and quarantine are the classic tools and approaches in public health to infectious diseases. According to the WHO, they have been painstakingly adopted in China in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, with a high percentage of identified close contacts completing medical observation; and they have been strongly recommended by the WHO for other countries."

Two months later, she still awaits a reply.

A Scottish government policy paper published on 10 March had set out the many benefits of contact tracing. As explained, it allows for the relatively quick identification and containment of infected individuals and clusters, particularly in the early days of virus suppression.

And, indeed, it had been used to reasonable effect by the authorities in Scotland after the reporting of such an early cluster following a gathering in Edinburgh of Nike employees on 26 and 27 February.

Yet, by 12 March, just two days after the publication of that paper, the Scottish government had followed the same Westminster line and discontinued the policy, with the same disastrous consequences.

Responding to questions on 21 May, SNP Health Spokesperson in Westminster, Dr Philippa Whitford, said that "looking back, the mistake right across the UK” was for Scotland to stop contact tracing on March 12, claiming, in apparent mitigation, "at that stage we still had this four nation decisions influenced by SAGE". 

Whitford also says that she herself advised at the time that any form of testing and tracking, even in nominal form, should have continued in Scotland in order to help break any chains of transmission.

Again, this shows the importance of Costello's demand to know what was going on inside SAGE, and to what extent Scotland was 'unwittingly' drawn into such a negligent and tragic UK policy position.

The sense of exasperation over the UK's failure on contact tracing was also duly expressed by Dr Rachel Clarke on 20 May:

"The WHO declared a pandemic on March 11th. That's 71 days ago. #COVID19 has killed over 40k Britons. And yet we *still* don't have adequate contact tracing. Not even close. This is a truly scandalous failure of government."

Nor did that UK shift away from containment on 12 March see any immediate implementation of a UK-wide lockdown. 

Alongside the abandoning of contact tracing, the results of delaying lockdown until 23 March has proved calamitous.

Again, Nicola Sturgeon had seemed ahead of the game here in recognising the need to close down schools and offering earlier closure advice to businesses. 

But this difference was at best nominal. As with contact tracing, Scotland was still in effective lockstep with London over lockdown, once more against all the better advice and warnings from the WHO.

A disturbing study from Scotland has been used to evaluate the UK-wide impact, revealing the shocking human cost of Johnson's late lead on lockdown.

As noted at Media Lens:

"University of Edinburgh researchers have estimated that at least 2,000 lives would have been saved in Scotland – a staggering 80 per cent of the total – if the government had introduced the lockdown two weeks earlier. Rowland Kao, professor of epidemiology and lead author of the study, said there had ‘definitely’ been enough information about the coming pandemic in mid-February. If the lockdown had been imposed across the whole of the UK on March 9, rather than March 23: ‘you would expect a similar effect to the one seen in our research on Scotland.’ In other words, there would have been an 80 per cent reduction in the death toll across the whole of the UK: around 26,000 lives saved (assuming the official undercount by May 3 of 32,490 fatalities). This is a truly shocking statistic and a damning indictment of the Tory government."

Increasing public criticism over this staggering rise in avoidable deaths has seen Johnson, Hancock and the daily 'briefing' make its own shift from political containment to deeper denial and mitigation.

But the stark truth is now all too evident. This government has failed to protect an entire population, most shamefully its elderly, poorest and most vulnerable. 

It has failed on planning, prevention, mass testing, contact tracing and isolating, mass gatherings, airport and border control, PPE, care homes, lockdown and protection of key workers.

It has also failed to prevent a widespread mental health crisis.

With over sixty thousand deaths and another possible surge, the UK sits as nothing less than a 

failed state.

And the abandonment of people to crude economic and political priorities goes catastrophically on.

Johnson has permitted a too early and highly irresponsible set of lockdown exit measures before any promised track and trace system is even in place, risking, as alarmed NHS leaders have warned, a major second wave of infection and another crisis overload on the health system.

His pledge to have a "world-beating" contact tracing system up and running by 1 June also looks like more faux Churchillian bluster. 

Nor does the proposed model augur well. Professor of Public Health Linda Bauld says she is “not convinced at all” that this very late, untested and highly centralised, rather than provenly localised, system will be efficient or useful.

But, again, even if Johnson did deliver, there's still the reckless folly of permitting dangerous lockdown relaxations before any such programme is doing its work.

In welcome contrast, Nicola Sturgeon's 4-phase 'route map', announced on 21 May, has laid out plans for a much more "cautious" and "proportionate" exit from lockdown. 

Phase one includes more outdoor activity, a limited easing of household restrictions and re-opening of certain retail outlets. By phase three, schools could re-open on 11 August, again subject to all the same key controls and as part of an agreed position with teaching bodies.

Yet, while expressing greater resolve than Johnson to match these gradual measures with contact tracing, Sturgeon's plans still suggest no immediate urgency in ramping up the strategy, intimating that it may only come into greater play in later phases. 

However, the model being rolled out in Scotland does fit the kind of well-established localised approach approved by Sridhar, Pollock, Bauld and others, rather than Johnson's centralised system, with its cumbersome technology, contracts to corporate giants like Serco, and much more worrying surveillance/privacy issues.

Northern Ireland has also rejected the UK version, building on its own more encouraging results.

As Sridhar, Pollock and others warn, there has to be an urgent application of track and test in these traditional, decentralised forms, with the devolved governments and regional health bodies in England best utilising their own health and educational capacities. 

For Sridhar, the critical question of re-opening schools has to be seen in this same key context. 

While there can be no completely risk-free environment yet for returning pupils and staff, any evaluations and decisions can only happen where an intensive test, trace contact policy is in place to provide real-time localised data on the relative risks and safety levels.

Yet, as rash plans for an early return to schools in England shows, basic lessons in public health monitoring still haven't been learned.

In stark contrast, Germany and Denmark are key examples of how such localised and vigilant measures have been used to guide major decisions such as schooling, helping to bring these countries back much more quickly and safely to points of relative social 'normality'.

Lamentably, the UK looks nowhere near this level of intelligent engagement.

Yet, while England in these regards now seems like the worst 'outlier' of the four UK members, a more general and worrying UK lockstep still prevails, seriously inhibiting any more efficient use of containment strategies at devolved and regional levels.

Nor, unlike successful infection-managing countries like Denmark, is there any indication across the UK of significantly increased capacity for mass testing, including asymptomatic people, in order to better track and evaluate clusters and suppress the spread.

As lockdown starts to scale down, containment needs to scale up, warns Devi Sridhar:

"We need to think ahead to next winter when flu season hits and activity moves indoors. How can a second lockdown be avoided? How can more deaths be prevented? How can we best use the summer to create strong public health infrastructure (incl. mass testing)?"

All told, even after so many avoidable deaths, and the looming threat of a second wave of infection, the entire UK is still lagging alarmingly behind what a wealth of science and public health analysis is saying about the need for dedicated and effective containment.