A look into the British government policy deliberations during the COVID-19 pandemic, being carried out by an independent investigation delegated to do so, has turned up evidence of the ugly Malthusian axioms of then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson. (Parson Malthus was infamous for having Mother Nature discipline humanity by culling the herd via disease, famine, war, etc.) Contemporaneous diary entries from Johnson’s chief scientific advisor, Sir Patrick Ballance, reported BBC on Oct. 31, record that the prime minister agreed with some Tory MPs who thought Covid was “nature’s way of dealing with old people.”
During testimony by Johnson’s former communications director Lee Cain, the inquiry saw Ballance’s notes. In August 2020, Ballance wrote that the Prime Minister was “obsessed with older people accepting their fate and letting the young get on with life and the economy going.” Ballance commented on Johnson’s discussion with a WhatsApp group: “Quite bonkers set of exchanges.”
Later, in December 2020, Ballance recorded Johnson saying that his Conservative Party “thinks the whole thing is pathetic and Covid is just nature’s way of dealing with old people—and I am not entirely sure I disagree with them.” Another note has Johnson agreeing with the Conservative Party’s Chief Whip Mark Spencer to the effect that “we should let the old people get it and protect others.” While Spencer denies in a tweet that he ever said that, Vallance’s point remains that Johnson agreed with what was represented as Spencer’s murderous view. (Spencer’s recent tweet is that he “actually said exactly the opposite”—assumedly, that only elderly people should be protected at that point.)
Brenda Doherty, spokesperson for “Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice UK,” said that reading Johnson’s messages felt like being “punched in the stomach…. During the first and second waves of the pandemic the U.K. had one of the highest death tolls per person in the world from Covid-19 and it’s clear just how personally responsible for that he was.”
