Steerpike Steerpike

Jeremy Hunt’s lockdown yarns

GB News

Jeremy Hunt is currently enjoying something of a renaissance  – all the more interesting in light of Boris Johnson’s ongoing difficulties. The former Health Secretary has been touring the TV studios recently, promoting his new book ZeroEliminating Preventable Harm and Tragedy in the NHSIt aims to ‘reduce the number of avoidable deaths to zero and in the process save money, reduce backlogs and improve working conditions.’ An ambitious goal, to say the least.

Allies of Hunt though have been keen to stress that such activities are absolutely, positively, NOT part of any leadership manoeuverings – even if he doesn’t rule out another bid in future. Hmm. Still, it can’t helped but be noticed that the Tory backbencher appears to have shifted his position on lockdown, just as Covid skepticism has become the default position of most of his parliamentary colleagues. Their votes, incidentally, would be crucial in any future leadership contest…

For appearing on GB News this morning, the Health Select Committee chair told hosts – and fellow Tory MPs – Esther McVey and Philip Davies that, if he had been running Britain during the pandemic ‘I would have done things differently.’ Asked: ‘Would you have locked us down for as long?’ by McVey, Hunt replied that:

I actually thought we could have avoided all lockdowns if we had been much quicker and set up test and trace as they did in South Korea and Taiwan. Those two places actually didn’t have any lockdowns in 2020 so that would have been my preferred route.

Curiously though, when such debates were going on during 2020 and 2021, Hunt’s voice was completely absent from the anti-lockdown side. With the benefit of the hindsight, Hunt may now indeed wish that such measures had never been implemented. But throughout the pandemic Hunt very much represented the mainstream scientific consensus on all of this. Indeed,

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in