Toby Young Toby Young

Why I admire Isabel Oakeshott

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I’ve been gripped by the Telegraph’s Lockdown Files. The 100,000 WhatsApp messages on Matt Hancock’s phone, handed to the paper by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, contain an embarrassment of riches. For those who thought the curtailment of our liberties between March 2020 and July 2021 was justified by ‘the science’, these exchanges will be an eye-opener.

Most senior journalists are more outraged by Oakeshott’s behaviour than by the revelations

The former health secretary and others were not so much ‘following the science’ as doing their best to milk the crisis for favourable press coverage and career advancement, often with no attempt to...

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