Black Lives Matter: the largest and most effective US social movement in history?

Black Lives Matter: the largest and most effective US social movement in history?
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
13 July 2020

Like many people I’ve followed and been inspired by the extensive news coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests in the United States. But I really didn’t understand their extraordinary size until I read a recent New York Times analysis.

For the uninitiated the women-founded movement began in 2013 with the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after George Zimmerman was acquitted after he shot and killed 17-year old African-American Trayvon Martin in Florida. Since them BLM has highlighted and opposed the brutality, injustice and unaccountability that black people experience in America, especially from the police and legal system.

BLM activists played a leading role in the demonstrations sparked by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and have led the protests in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis on 25 May.

According to the 3 July New York Times analysis the recent demonstrations peaked on 6 June, with half a million people on the streets in nearly 550 locations across the US. Overall, there have been more than 4,700 demonstrations, or an average of 140 per day, since the first protests began in Minneapolis on 26 May.

“Four recent polls… suggest that about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks”, the report notes.

After interviewing academics and crowd-counting experts the New York Times states “These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the country’s history” – bigger than the civil rights marches of the 1960s and the Women’s March of 2017.

“Really, it’s hard to overstate the scale of this movement”, Deva Woodly, an associate professor of politics at the New School, comments.

Once one comprehends the immense size of the protests, their wide-ranging and deep impacts are less surprising.

Across the US cities and police forces have responded by instituting a series of reforms – highlighting how BLM has mainstreamed the concept of ‘defund the police’. In New York City Mayor Bill de Blaiso has pledged to reallocate police funding. “We’re committed to seeing a shift of funding to youth services, to social services, that will happen literally in the course of the next three weeks, but I’m not going to go into detail because it is subject to negotiation, and we want to figure out what makes sense,” de Blasio said, according to the New York Times. Similarly, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced he would be redirecting $250 million from the police budget into health care, jobs and “healing” programmes for the city’s communities of colour, the Los Angeles Times reported in June.

The state of Iowa, Dallas and Denver have banned the use of chokeholds, with the Mile-High City introducing a new policy meaning police officers will have “to alert supervisors any time they point a gun at someone”, according to the Denver Post.

Speaking to the BBC Today Programme on 29 June, Melina Abdullah, Professor of Pan-African Studies at Cal State LA and BLM activist, noted “The number of killings at the hands of police has remained relatively stable” in the US. “However… in cities with strong Black Lives Matter chapters the numbers have dropped dramatically”.

On the national political stage, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has pledged to establish a police oversight board within his first 100 days in office and address institutional racism. And globally, BLM in the US has inspired protests in many countries, including the UK, France, Germany, Belgium, Brazil, Japan, Uganda, Kenya, Ghana and South Africa.

Crucial though these changes are, perhaps the most exciting and important influence of BLM is the impact it has had on American public opinion.

“In my 35 years of polling, I’ve never seen opinion shift this fast or deeply. We are a different country today than just 30 days ago”, Republican pollster Frank Luntz tweeted on 8 June.

He was referring to a 2 June Monmouth poll that showed 57 percent of Americans agreed that police are more likely to use excessive force against African Americans, compared to 33 percent when asked the same question after the killing of Eric Garner by New York City police in 2014. In the same survey 76 per cent of Americans, including 71 per cent of white people, said racism and discrimination was “a big problem” in the United States – a 26 percentage-point increase since 2015.

The New York Times notes “Public opinion on race and criminal justice issues has been steadily moving left since the first [BLM-led] protests ignited over the fatal shootings of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown.” However, according to the New York Times data from online survey firm Civiqs shows that since the death of Floyd support for Black Lives Matter increased by nearly as much as it had over the previous two years: a majority of Americans support the movement by a 25-point margin, up from a 17-point margin before the most recent wave of protests began.

As the Monmouth poll above highlights, there has been a significant shift in opinion amongst white Americans. This includes views of the police, with the percentage of white Americans who have a very favourable or somewhat favourable impression of police officers dropping from 72% to 61% within a week, according to a survey in early June organised by the Democracy Fund, UCLA and USA Today newspaper. White people have been a significant part of the recent BLM protests. Explaining that a recent BLM protest in her predominantly black Brooklyn neighbourhood was attended by mostly white people, African-American novelist Brit Bennett told BBC’s Start The Week programme last month that this “mainstream white support” gives her hope for the future of the movement.

The protests are continuing, though with much less media attention. And while they remain popular, the New York Times notes “events could move public opinion the other way”, suggesting “a sense that protests were getting out of control, with looting and violence, could… harm the public image of the movement.”

Polling suggests this is a danger, with a 2 June Reuters/Ipsos poll finding 73 per cent of respondents support “peaceful protest and demonstrations,” but only 22% back violent protests, with 79% believing looting and vandalism “undermine the original protest’s case for justice.”

Let’s hope BLM continues to thrive and force the change that is so desperately needed in the US and beyond.

As Professor Douglas McAdam, an Emeritus Professor at Stanford University who studies social movements, commented in the New York Times: “It looks… like these protests are achieving what very few do: setting in motion a period of significant, sustained, and widespread social, political change. We appear to be experiencing a social change tipping point — that is as rare in society as it is potentially consequential.”

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

How public opposition has forced Tory government U-turns

How public opposition has forced Tory government U-turns
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
8 July 2020

While there are always some people who are quick to dismiss grassroots activism as ineffective, the last couple of months has provided inspiring case studies showing how protest can have a huge impact on the government and the wider political landscape.

For instance, the coronavirus crisis may have trapped most of us at home during lockdown, but public pressure has forced the government’s hand on several important issues.

In April a “cabinet source” spoke to the Telegraph about the government’s exit strategy from the lockdown. ‘It [the government] is waiting for the public to change their mind’, they noted. ‘We didn’t want to go down this route in the first place — public and media pressure pushed the lockdown, we went with the science.’

The government has also been pushed into making two embarrassing U-turns. As the Guardian recently explained: “The phased opening of schools in England began at the beginning of June, but the government shelved plans to get every primary school child back in class for at least a month before the summer holiday, in the face of the opposition from unions and some scientists.”

Even more spectacular was the government’s retreat on free school meals vouchers, which it had said would stop outside of term time, affecting about 1.3 million children in England.

In response the 22-year old Manchester United and England footballer Marcus Rashford wrote an open letter to the government explaining the importance of the scheme to children, highlighting his family’s reliance on the scheme when he was younger. Downing Street rejected his protest, with ministers sent out to defend the government’s position. However, with extensive media coverage and growing support the government reversed its position within 24-hours and confirmed free school meals vouchers would continue during school holidays.

And even when public opposition doesn’t win a clear victory over government – which is most of the time – it can still have important results. So the furore over Dominic Cummings breaking lockdown didn’t end with the Prime Minister’s closest adviser being sacked but it likely massively wounded him. As a “source” told the Telegraph last month: “People just aren’t scared of him any more. Everyone knows he is one wrong move from being out of a job.”

Sparked by the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on 25 May and subsequent demonstrations in the US, the Black Lives Matters protests in the UK have been hugely impactful too.

According to government figures, approximately 137,000 people attended more than 200 protests in the UK over the weekend of 6-7 June. After protesters toppled the statue of slaver Edward Colston on 7 June, Tower Hamlets council quickly removed the statue of slave trader Robert Milligan and Oriel College at Oxford University agreed to take down the statue of the imperialist Cecil Rhodes. The University of Liverpool has also agreed to rename a building named after former prime minister William Gladstone because of his links to the slave trade.

In addition, London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced he would set up a commission to review London’s landmarks to ensure they reflect the capital’s diversity. A day later the Guardian reported “all Labour councils in England and Wales said they would examine statues and monuments.”

More broadly, the protests have triggered a national conversation on British racism and colonialism, with renewed demands for Black history to be made a mandatory part of the national curriculum. And while there is already a slavery museum in Liverpool, there are growing calls for a national museum of slavery.

While coronavirus and the Black Lives Matter agitation have received extensive media coverage, another hugely important example of the power of protest seems was barely noticed by the mainstream media.

“For now, fracking is over”, Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng told the BBC’s North West Tonight programme on 18 June. “We had a moratorium on fracking last year and frankly the debate’s moved on. It is not something that we’re looking to do.”

As well as accurately describing Kwarteng’s statement as “a victory for the planet and our future existence on it”, Green Party peer Jenny Jones was correct when she told the Independent: “The end of fracking in the UK is a victory for all the campaigners who faced arrest in order to stop another climate chaos technology from taking root.”

Then Prime Minister David Cameron had announced the government was “going all out” for fracking in January 2014. He rejected calls for a moratorium on fracking a year later. However, with just a single well fracked in the UK since 2011, in 2018 the Guardian reported “Cameron has told US oil executives of his frustration that the UK has failed to embrace fracking despite his best efforts, and hit out at green groups for being ‘absolutely obsessed’ with blocking new fossil fuel extraction.”

A number of hopeful lessons can be taken from these successful struggles.

First, although the Tory Party won a majority of eighty seats in the December general election, the government is susceptible to public pressure at the moment.

Second, extra-parliamentary action is as important – arguably more important – than what happens in parliament. This is crucial to understand when the Labour Party is shifting away from the social movements and unions that backed Labour under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, and trying to project itself as a more professional and very much parliamentary-focussed alternative to the Tories. But this shift to the right doesn’t alter how change is made. As British author Gary Younge wrote in December: “progressive change is enacted through parliament, but it rarely begins there.”

Third, it is important not to be complacent. Yes, public pressure and direct action have changed government policy for the better, but this has only happened because of the hard work of campaigners over weeks, months, years, even decades. Citing the sociologist Charles Tilly, the historian Keith Flett had some wise words in a letter published in the Guardian last year: “Effective protest that leads to real change is a difficult thing to achieve and historically has required… an entire repertoire of contention”. To win more victories, and bigger and more important victories such as overturning the government’s inadequate response to the climate crisis, will require a huge and sustained surge in grassroots activism and organisation.

One of my favourite quotes – from former slave Frederick Douglass – is famous for a reason: because it is true. “Those who profess to favour freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters”, he said in 1857. “Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.”

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.

The UK government’s criminally negligent response to coronavirus

The UK government’s criminally negligent response to coronavirus
by Ian Sinclair
Peace News
June 2020

Due to the extraordinary nature of the crisis, the UK government has had an unprecedented opportunity to control the narrative about their response to the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to the daily Number 10 press briefings there has been a months-long, multi-faceted public information campaign using television and radio spots, social media posts, billboards, wrap around messaging on the front of all major newspapers and a letter to every household in the UK.

Despite this communications advantage, there has been increasing criticism of the government’s handling of the crisis from sections of the media, health and science experts, opposition political parties, trade unions and the general public.

In response, the government has rolled out a number of common retorts – they are ‘following the science’, their primary motivation has been to save lives, and it is easy to criticise in retrospect, as ex-cabinet minister baroness Nicky Morgan said on BBC Any Questions (22 May).

A careful reading of mainstream news reports tells a very different story – one which supports Lancet editor-in-chief Dr Richard Horton’s description of the government’s response as ‘a national scandal’ (BBC Question Time, 26 March). The UK’s official death toll of 41,969 as of 16 June – the highest in Europe, and the second highest in the world after the United States – confirms Horton’s criticism. Due to deficiencies in how deaths are recorded, the government’s figures are likely a significant underestimate: by the same date the Financial Times estimated the number of UK excess deaths linked to coronavirus to be 65,400.

‘It goes right back to 2010’

While nearly all media coverage has focused on the period since the outbreak in China in December 2019, the UK government’s reaction has much deeper roots. ‘It goes right back to 2010, when the [Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition] government came in with a very clear policy to reduce public spending across the board, including the National Health Service’, sir David King, the former chief scientific adviser, told LBC radio on 15 April when asked about the UK’s response being slower than other countries. ‘I’m afraid these austerity measures did lead to the cutting back on the risk management programmes’.

The government also ignored several warnings about the possibility of a pandemic and its lack of preparedness. In October 2016 a three-day training called Exercise Cygnus was held on how to deal with a pandemic, involving all major government departments, the NHS and local authorities. According to the Sunday Telegraph (28 March) the unpublished report of the exercise concluded ‘There was not enough personal protective equipment (PPE) for the nation’s doctors and nurses’ and ‘the NHS was about to “fall over” due to a shortage of ventilators and critical care beds’.

Publishing a leaked copy of the report on 7 May, the Guardian provided more detail: ‘it contained 26 key recommendations, including boosting the capacity of care homes and the numbers of staff available to work in them’ and ‘warned of the challenge facing homes asked to take in patients from hospitals.’

A senior academic directly involved in Exercise Cygnus and the current pandemic noted ‘These exercises are supposed to prepare government for something like this – but it appears they were aware of the problem but didn’t do much about it’ (Sunday Telegraph, 28 March).

In September 2017 the National Risk Register Of Civil Emergencies was published by the Cabinet Office, noting ‘there is a high probability of a flu pandemic occurring’ with ‘up to 50% of the UK population experiencing symptoms, potentially leading to between 20,000 and 750,000 fatalities and high levels of absence from work.’

More recently, on 30 January 2020 the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared a ‘public health emergency of international concern’. According to David Nabarro, professor of global health at Imperial College, London, ‘That is the highest level of alert that WHO can issue… It made it very clear then – to every country in the world – that we were facing something very serious indeed’ (Guardian, 18 April).

Herd immunity

Though ministers have repeatedly denied it, the concept of ‘herd immunity’ seems to have been central to the government’s response plan (herd immunity is when a large majority of the population are infected and therefore gain immunity and stop the spread of the virus).

The government’s stated ‘mitigation’ strategy – to delay the spread of the virus, and reduce and broaden the peak so the NHS is not overwhelmed – fits with the goal of herd immunity, as chief scientific advisor sir Patrick Vallance explained on the BBC Today programme (Guardian, 13 March).

According to a ‘senior politician’, the chief medical officer Chris Whitty was ‘absolutely focused on herd immunity’ when they spoke in late January (Sunday Times, 19 April). The prime minister Boris Johnson himself floated the idea – without naming it – on ITV’s This Morning on 5 March. Speaking to the BBC Today Programme on 13 March, sir Patrick said one of ‘the key things we need to do’ is ‘build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission’.

There are two huge problems with herd immunity – both widely understood in March, if not before. First, the estimated mortality rates of the virus – around 1% (Guardian, 7 March) – means a large number of people would die by the time the UK achieved herd immunity. Putting these figures together with the 66.6 million population of the UK, we would end up with around half a million deaths in order to achieve the 80 percent level of people with antibodies.

Second, there was – and still is – ‘no clear evidence people who had suffered the virus would have lasting antibody protection’ (Sunday Times, 24 May). As WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told the BBC Today programme on 14 March: ‘We don’t know enough about the science of this virus, it hasn’t been in our population for long enough for us to know what it does in immunological terms’.

Despite these deadly flaws, the government’s herd immunity plan to manage rather than suppress the spread of the virus likely shaped other decisions that have led to thousands of unnecessary deaths, including ending the quarantining of people arriving at UK airports from coronavirus hotspots on 13 March (Financial Times, 23-24 May), the cancellation of contact tracing and mass testing, and the delayed national lockdown.

Ditching tracing and testing

When people started getting infected in the UK, the government established a programme to test suspected cases and trace people they had been in contact with. However, on 12 March the government announced it would no longer try to ‘track and trace’ everyone suspected of having the virus, while testing would be limited to patients in hospital with serious breathing problems (Guardian, 13 March).

This U-turn contradicted WHO recommendations. ‘The most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission. And to do that, you must test and isolate’, WHO Director General said on 16 March. ‘You cannot fight a fire blindfolded. And we cannot stop this pandemic if we don’t know who is infected.’

‘We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case’, he noted: ‘If they test positive, isolate them and find out who they have been in close contact with… and test those people too’ (WHO, 16 March).

On 17 April the Health Secretary belatedly announced the government would restart tracing the contacts of people who have had coronavirus symptoms, with 1 June as the planned start date.

Too slow to lockdown

On 24 January professor Neil Ferguson, from Imperial College’s School of Public Health and a member of the government’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) committee, submitted a report to ministers and officials. According to the Sunday Times (19 April), the report noted ‘There needed to be a 60% cut in the transmission rate — which meant stopping contact between people. In layman’s terms it meant a lockdown’.

Similarly, on 26 February infectious disease modeller professor John Edmunds and his team from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine presented their latest ‘worst scenario’ predictions to the government’s Scientific Pandemic Influenza group on modelling (SPI-M).

This group advises the country’s scientific decision-makers on SAGE. ‘It warned that 27 million people could be infected and 220,000 intensive care beds would be needed if no action were taken to reduce infection rates’, the Sunday Times (19 April) reported. ‘The predicted death toll was 380,000. Edmunds’ colleague Nick Davies, who led the research, says the report emphasised the urgent need for a lockdown’.

A further investigation by the Sunday Times (24 May) reported that modelling teams from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine separately concluded that if the government’s mitigation strategy continued, there could be approximately 250,000 deaths – results they passed onto SAGE on 3 March.

However, the government only implemented a national lockdown on 23 March. Back-dated modelling by Oxford University estimates there were just 14,000 infected people in the UK on 3 March. By 23 March the number was likely to have been 1.5 million. ‘Those 20 days of government delay are the single most important reason why the UK has the second highest number of deaths from the coronavirus in the world’, the Sunday Times (24 May) notes.

Exiting lockdown

After coming under pressure to set out an ‘exit strategy’ from right-wing Tories and the leaders of the Scottish National Party (The Times, 24 April) and Labour party (Guardian, 15 April), on 10 May the prime minister Boris Johnson announced a loosening of the lockdown. He urged people in jobs such as construction and manufacturing to return to work, gave permission for unlimited outdoor exercise and suggested shops might open in June.

However, with new daily cases estimated to be 20,000 (The Times, 8 May) and a contact tracing programme still not in place, many experts were quick to warn it was too early to loosen the lockdown. Professor Edmunds warned that the current level of cases made it ‘probably impossible’ to control the outbreak through contact tracing (The Times, 8 May).

David Hunter, professor of Epidemiology and Medicine at the University of Oxford, noted ‘If we take the prime minister’s advice and return to work in large numbers now – and without the ability to test, trace and isolate – then virus spread will increase, there will be super-spreader events and local or regional lockdowns will have to be reconsidered’ (Guardian, 11 May). Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said the UK did not ‘have in place the basic building blocks of surveillance to actually know who has the virus’ and therefore ‘what we are going to see is cases are going to go up… the virus is going to continue spreading and in a few weeks we are going to have this exact same debate again’ (BBC Question Time, 14 May).

The importance of activism

Notwithstanding the government’s criminally negligent response to the crisis and the huge UK death toll, there is some hopeful evidence the government and Tory party are worried about public opinion, and susceptible to public pressure.

Citing one senior MP, in early April the Guardian noted the Tory party was ‘watching the polls closely’ (2 April), while on 18 April the Telegraph published a revealing quote from a ‘cabinet source’ about the government’s exit strategy from the lockdown. ‘It [the government] is waiting for the public to change their mind’, they noted. ‘We didn’t want to go down this route in the first place — public and media pressure pushed the lockdown, we went with the science.’ And following reports the prime minister’s adviser Dominic Cummings had breached the lockdown, the Guardian noted MPs ‘said they were motivated by anger among their constituents’ (30 May), while the Telegraph reported some Tory MPs ‘said they would wait to see how their constituents responded before passing judgement’ (26 May).

Unlike the UK’s response to the climate crisis, post-9/11 foreign policy or anti-nuclear weapons activism, this influence has come about without any organised national grassroots campaign or group informing and directing public outrage and resistance.

Activists, then, have an important role to play in maximising pressure on the government, including tracking and drawing attention to government failures, establishing campaign groups and organising a coordinated response.

Why the government is wrong to say the NHS hasn’t been overwhelmed by Covid-19

Why the government is wrong to say the NHS hasn’t been overwhelmed by Covid-19
by Ian Sinclair
Morning Star
30 June 2020

Appearing on the BBC Today Programme on 6 April the Health Secretary noted a “core goal” during the pandemic was “making sure the NHS isn’t overwhelmed.”

“Which everybody was telling me a month ago was impossible to achieve but that has been achieved”, Matt Hancock said.

The Prime Minister exhibited even more audacity at the end of April. The UK had “avoided the tragedy that engulfed other parts of the world”, he bragged, seemingly unaware the UK had one of the highest death tolls in the world. How could Boris Johnson make this claim? “Because at no stage has our NHS been overwhelmed”, he said.

Showing its gullible establishment colours, the Guardian repeated the government’s narrative, stating on 17 April that the NHS “has been able to cope”.

In reality these statements are only true if you ignore some very obvious, inconvenient facts.

First, news reports have confirmed that in mid-March the NHS was ordered to discharge 15,000 patients from hospital to free up space for people with Covid-19.

Hundreds were sent to care homes, which “were put under pressure by the NHS to accept people at short notice”, the Times reported on 15 May. Moreover, “people were not tested before being moved” (only on 16 April did the government announce patients would be tested before being discharged into care homes). This exodus seems to have been enabled by Public Health England’s National Infection Service changing their guidance on discharging patients from hospital on 19 March, which meant “hospitals no longer needed to avoid sending patients to care homes, a decision which was heavily criticised”, the Telegraph reported on 6 May.

Quoted in the Times on 13 April, Robert Kilgour, owner of Renaissance Care which runs 15 care homes in Scotland, said there was “huge discouragement by the authorities to hospitalise, a wish to keep them where they are and look after them where they are”. He also mentioned “instances of ambulances taking residents to hospital and returning and coming straight back.” This is confirmed by Professor Martin Green, spokesperson for Care England’s larger care companies, who told the Guardian’s Polly Toynbee some areas had “blanket policies not to admit residents to hospital.”

During Prime Minister’s Questions on 13 May, Labour Party leader Keir Starmer read out testimony from a cardiologist: “We discharged known, suspected and unknown cases into care homes which were unprepared with no formal warning that patients were infected, no testing available and no PPE [Personal Protective Equipment] to prevent transmission. We actively seeded this into the very population that was most vulnerable”.

As Toynbee summarises: “The NHS was only saved, Green alleges, because hospitals dumped the crisis on care homes.”

The government’s policy of discharging patients from hospitals during the pandemic was likely a key reason why the death toll is so high in care homes – at least 15,000 people have died in UK care homes from confirmed or suspected Covid-19, the Guardian reported on 14 June.

Another reason why the government’s claim the NHS wasn’t overwhelmed doesn’t hold water is because the government artificially suppressed demand for the NHS – by discouraging people from accessing NHS services during the early stages of the crisis.

On 16 March the government said people should only use the NHS “where we really need to”, and get advice on the NHS website where possible.

This messaging caused predictable results. In March “the number of people going to their local emergency department fell by 600,000, or 29 per cent, compared to same month last year”, the Independent reported.

More broadly, at the end of April the Guardian revealed “Doctors have postponed more than 2m operations after non-emergency surgery was cancelled for at least three months to free up beds for coronavirus patients.” It will take “many years” for the NHS to get back to a good position, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons commented.

It’s worth considering what so-called non-emergency care really means. “Almost two-thirds of Britons with common life-threatening conditions have been denied care by the NHS because hospitals have focused on fighting Covid-19”, the Guardian noted earlier this month, citing research from Essex University. “Seven out of 10 people with diabetes, 65% of those with high blood pressure and 64% of people suffering from breathing problems have had care cancelled by the NHS across the UK during the pandemic.”

According to Cancer Research UK nearly 2.5 million Britons have not been screened, tested or treated for cancer because of the disruption to the NHS during the crisis. They estimate more than 24,000 cases of cancer have likely gone undiagnosed as a result of this suspension of normal services, with the delays in treatment meaning some people’s disease is now inoperable.

So, yes, technically the NHS might not have been overwhelmed during the crisis. But this was only because the government recklessly discharged thousands of vulnerable patients – including infected people – into care homes and the community, discouraged the public not to access healthcare, and massively cut back on NHS services, thus creating huge long-term problems for the NHS and additional pain and suffering for thousands of people.

Appalling though it is, the government’s claim to have successfully protected the NHS is just one dangerous deception amongst many in what has arguably been the largest campaign of government deceit since Iraq.

And the lies are never-ending. Just this month a new analysis by the Guardian found that in April “more than 1,000 people died [from Covid-19] every day in the UK for 22 consecutive days – in stark contrast with daily tolls announced by the government”. Sir David King, the former Chief Scientific Adviser, said the gap between the government’s figures and the true death toll was “an attempt to play down the adversity that the country was faced with”.

On 20 May Boris Johnson told the House of Commons “We have growing confidence that we will have a test, track and trace operation that will be world-beating and yes, it will be in place by June 1”. Yet on 18 June the government announced it had abandoned its coronavirus contact-tracing app – “after spending three months and millions of pounds on technology that experts had repeatedly warned would not work”, the Guardian reported.  On the same day the independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, made up of preeminent science and medical experts from the UK and around the world, described the government’s wider contact tracing system as “not fit for purpose”. They noted figures released by the government reveal “extensive data gaps” and “the actual number of daily and weekly cases in the community is unknown because testing has been chaotic and haphazard”. Therefore, “we do not know how many cases have been missed and have not been transferred for contact tracing”. Furthermore, the group noted “we have no idea how many people contacted are actually isolating and what health or other support they are receiving”.

This Inspector Clouseau-level of incompetence means the results of the University of Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government Lockdown Rollback Checklist shouldn’t be a surprise. Published on 1 June and ranking countries according to the extent they meet the World Health Organisation’s recommendations for rolling back lockdown, the UK appears in 167^th place in a league table of 170 nations.

With the poor and BAME people making up a disproportionate number of the more than 63,000 excess deaths in the UK the Office for National Statistics estimates due to Covid-19, as ever it’s the most vulnerable members of society who bear the brunt of the government’s criminal negligence.

Follow Ian on Twitter @IanJSinclair.