The shameful attacks on the Covid inquiry prove it: the right is lost in anti-science delusion | Polly Toynbee

That number will stay fixed for ever in public memory: 23,000 people died because Boris Johnson resisted locking the country down in time. As Covid swept in, and with horrific images of Italian temporary morgues in tents, he went on holiday and took no calls. With the NHS bracing to be “overwhelmed” by the virus, he rode his new motorbike, walked his dog and hosted friends at Chevening.

Nothing is surprising about that: he was ejected from Downing Street and later stepped down as an MP largely for partying and lying to parliament about it. Everyone knew he was a self-aggrandising fantasist with a “toxic and chaotic culture” around him. But this is not just about one narcissistic politician. It’s about his entire rightwing coterie of libertarians and their lethally dominant creed in the UK media.

They have a long history of rejecting things that save lives – seatbelts, speed limits, smoking restrictions, sugar taxes, vaccination, benefits, sewers, clean air, the NHS itself and, of course, stopping climate breakdown. Recall that during the 1980s and 1990s, the Sunday Times under the editorship of Andrew Neil promoted the strangest gay plague theory, publishing pieces suggesting that Aids wasn’t caused by HIV, and that it was almost impossible for heterosexual people to contract it. (Neil has said he regrets certain aspects of the paper’s coverage, but does not take personal responsibility for it.)

That anti-science tradition is alive and well today. Lockdowns are the quintessence of everything rightwing science-sceptics abhor: what misfortune that a tribe least equipped to cope was in power during the pandemic. In the circumstances, the interventions from those in charge were “too little, too late”. Hard to imagine, but Covid in the UK could have been even more deadly, had unavoidable facts about the pandemic not eventually overwhelmed their fact-free ideologies.

Naturally, lockdown sceptics are out in force to demolish the latest module of the Covid report chaired by Heather Hallett, the former high court judge appointed by Boris Johnson. From the start they had proclaimed lockdowns worse than pointless. On the recent fifth anniversary of the first lockdown, they were contesting who denounced it first: Daniel Hannan in the Sunday Telegraph boasted he was the only one to “stand in the way of a stampede”. “What the hell were we thinking? Five years ago, we were sliding towards the most expensive mistake ever made by a British government, a mistake that led to our financial ruin, the annihilation of our basic freedoms and the obliteration of public trust,” he went on.

Toby Young in the Spectator dashed to outdo Hannan: “I’m happy to name myself as one of the first journalists to oppose the lockdown policy, along with Peter Hitchens, Allison Pearson, Ross Clark, Julia Hartley-Brewer and a handful of others.” The Daily Mail, Telegraph, Sun, Express and Spectator, joined mid-pandemic by GB News, were among those who kept the extremist libertarian flag flying, with no relenting since. The public needs reminding constantly of those 23,000 deaths, as Nigel Farage and Richard Tice were among lockdown’s fiercest opponents, hastily rebranding their Brexit party as Reform UK to campaign against all restrictions. None of this can be called “populist”: the public always favours precaution, as they did in lockdown.

Now with this report, virulent attacks by this cadre rain down on Hallett’s statistics and reasoning. The Telegraph contests the numbers. Toby Young’s outlet, the Daily Sceptic (successor to his Lockdown Sceptics blog), is on the attack. Shamefully, Johnson himself smeared the inquiry that he himself complied with as “hopelessly incoherent”, in the Daily Mail.

Maybe 23,000 is too many or not enough: but it’s an informed estimate. Sweden is the country constantly quoted by the right, as it relied entirely on a voluntary advisory approach, never compulsory lockdowns. In terms of deaths per capita, many fewer Swedes died than Britons: case proven? Hallett trounced? Alas, we are not Sweden in social structure, national wealth, vulnerable deprivation, health or social care, mainly due to the longterm malign influence of the right fighting tooth and claw against Swedish-style social democracy. But here’s the most telling research, comparing the socially and economically similar Norway with Sweden. Norway implemented lockdowns while Sweden refused. Many more died per million in Sweden (2,759) than in Norway (1,050).

The precautionary principle, putting safety first when the science is uncertain, is as alien to these ideologues as risk registers. To them, safeguarding regulations and public protections are comical, while officials who shield society are laughable blobs and plods. Johnson took a witty swipe at me back in 2006 exemplifying the great chasm between our sides. He said that I incarnate “all the nannying, high-taxing, high-spending schoolmarminess of Blair’s Britain” as “the high-priestess of our paranoid, mollycoddled, risk-averse, airbagged, booster-seated culture of political correctness and ‘elf’n’safety fascism’”. Fair enough and funnily enough, I wear the badge with pride; public wellbeing is a serious matter.

Johnson and his world were never serious: they play games and affect jocular mannerisms because they don’t actually believe in government. Brexit was another of their political games, with direst consequences. The report quotes Johnson saying, “let the bodies pile high” at the prospect of large numbers dying in care homes (he has denied saying it). More than 45,000 of them did indeed die, as hospitals tipped untested patients into care home beds.

That was an outrageously flippant and deeply revealing attitude, so objectionable that it instantly shuts down discussion. His faction are using their own bogus figures to reject Hallett’s and “prove” lockdowns don’t save lives, as so often decadently rejecting majority scientific opinion.

But their outrageous attacks shouldn’t deter a deep debate on the far more difficult question: was the mighty cost of lockdowns and government recompense to business and individuals worth the number of (mostly elderly) lives saved? How many QALYs – quality adjusted life years – ie years of good quality, were preserved and at what price?

Bereaved families are painfully clear in their view. But the gigantic cost has to be weighed in the balance, estimated by the House of Commons library at £310bn to £410bn. A Benthamite felicific calculus seeking the greatest good for the greatest number might compute how many more lives could be saved one way or another, how much more happiness could be created and unhappiness avoided if the chancellor now had that vast extra sum for her budget this week.

Understandably people are torn by such questions. It’s not easy, but it needs serious thought that will never be had from these extremist dilettantes. Future modules of Hallett’s inquiry will look at the terrible harm done by keeping children out of school for extended periods; leaving old people to die alone; domestic violence; loneliness; and the crippling blow to the economy, commerce and public services. Those life and death trade-offs need to be faced truthfully in the next pandemic. But always beware the deranged right’s predilection for “freedom” over even the most basic lifesaving health and safety measures.

Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

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