Owen Bowcott – The Guardian Oct 27, 2020
Lord Sumption. Click to enlarge
The government has deliberately stoked fear over coronavirus while behaving like an authoritarian regime relying on police state tactics, according to the former supreme court justice Jonathan Sumption.
In his most forceful critique to date of the government’s handling of the pandemic, the outspoken lawyer condemned the way “the British state exercised coercive powers over its citizens on a scale never previously attempted”.
Delivering the Cambridge Freshfields annual law lecture, Lord Sumption said: “The ease with which people could be terrorised into surrendering basic freedoms which are fundamental to our existence … came as a shock to me in March 2020.”
He is not the only former judge recently to lament the loss of effective parliamentary scrutiny of emergency Covid powers. Last month Lady Hale, former president of the supreme court, alleged that MPs and peers had surrendered their role during the coronavirus pandemic.
In his address Sumption said the emergency measures were “the most significant interference with personal freedom in the history of our country”.
He stated: “I do not doubt the seriousness of the epidemic, but I believe that history will look back on the measures taken to contain it as a monument of collective hysteria and governmental folly.”
The government, he noted, had already tried to avoid parliamentary scrutiny during Brexit by proroguing parliament, a procedure subsequently ruled unlawful by the supreme court last year.
“Governments hold power in Britain on the sufferance of the elected chamber of the legislature,” Sumption argued. “Without that we are no democracy. The present government has a different approach. It seeks to derive its legitimacy directly from the people, bypassing their elected representatives.”
Sage, the government’s panel of expert scientific advisers, he said, had this year noted: “Citizens should be treated as rational actors, capable of taking decisions for themselves and managing personal risk.” That warning, Sumption said, had been ignored.
Powers under the Public Health Act “were not intended to authorise measures as drastic as those which have been imposed”, Sumption added. The reason that legislation was exploited, he suspected, was that “the degree of scrutiny provided for under the Public Health Act is limited”.
When the law was introduced in the 1980s, he said, its powers were mainly directed at controlling the behaviour of infected people.
Announcing the first lockdown, the health secretary, Matt Hancock, had indulged in a “bluff”, Sumption said. “Even on the widest view of the legislation the government had no power to give such orders without making statutory regulations. No such regulations existed until 1 pm on 26 March, three days after the announcement.”
The government’s behaviour, Sumption told his audience, was characterised by “a cavalier disregard for the limits of their legal powers”.
A combination of “government advice and government-inspired pressure from regulators” had been used to limit access to doctors. This, Sumption said, had “had a serious impact on the diagnosis and early treatment of far more mortal diseases than Covid-19, notably cancer”.
The police had repeatedly exceeded their powers, he suggested. “When I ventured to criticise them in a BBC interview for acting beyond their powers I received a letter from the Derbyshire police commissioner objecting to my remarks on the ground that in a crisis such things were necessary. The implication was that in a crisis the police were entitled to do whatever they thought fit, without being unduly concerned about their legal powers. That is my definition of a police state.”
By using “propaganda”, he said, the government had “to some extent been able to create its own public opinion – fear was deliberately stoked up by the government”.
And being a libertarian, he said, had become a term of abuse. “The public’s fear effectively silenced opposition in the House of Commons. The official opposition did not dare to challenge the government, except to suggest that they should have been even tougher even quicker.”
Sumption concluded: “The British public has not even begun to understand the seriousness of what is happening to our country. Many, perhaps most of them don’t care, and won’t care until it is too late. They instinctively feel that the end justifies the means, the motto of every totalitarian government which has ever been … The government has discovered the power of public fear to let it get its way.”
This has been growing for years. It’s strange how acceptable a developing police state is to people like him…until it acts against them. He’s not concerned about the authoritarian state and “us”, he’s concerned about the authoritarian state and “me”.
When I and others used to comment about this we were dismissed as loonie lefties, but at last this conservative figure gets it. Not so loonie now. Not so left.
The problem is when you get statements like; … “I do not doubt the seriousness of the pandemic”… you are in essence following the official cover story line and by default you are not only defeating the whole object of your argument but perpetuating the suffering.
The scientific evidence is already out there but is being criminally suppressed by a corrupt government and its controlled/compromised mainstream media. Addressing the roots should always be the priority and never its symptoms!
It’s all very well for a former supreme court judge to point out how illegal the actions of the Government have been. Why are the current supreme court judges keeping quiet? They should be protecting our rights because they are still in a position to do so.
History will only look back on whatever the (((masters))) wish it to look back on. If anyone assumes that we are ever going back to a normal state, then they are lost to history, already.
The only thing that will ever be looked back on by history is whatever the victors write.
The question is: Who will finally be the victors?
I worry when he States:
“I do not doubt the seriousness of the epidemic, but I believe that history will look back on the measures taken to contain it as a monument of collective hysteria and governmental folly.”
He seems to be doing a balancing act with this one so as to protect himself from Government flax. Has he not listened to the Doctors and Health professionals throughtout the world who clearly do not think it is as serious as it is being made out to be!
More diversion.
What’s this really all about?
It’s more, deceptive programming of the population, by the insidious elites. Lord Sumption, is giving the people [false] reassurance that there are people in the judiciary that know something is very wrong. He’ll huff and he’ll puff about it, but he won’t blow the plandemic down, that’s for sure. There’s a big difference between giving Guardian interviews and actually doing something through the courts to bring that something to an end and as many people on here already know, ALL of those in the judiciary and the police are just another tentacle of the monster that also includes politics and banking, amongst many more. They are all subservient to the crown, who are certainly involved in this. Prince Charles, like his demented father Prince Philip, wants rapid depopulation of the earth. You see, we the people have fulfilled our obligations and made them exceptionally wealthy. Now they have no further use to us, peons and want us gone.
Sorry folks, Lord Sumption isn’t going to do diddly to bring the corrupt to trial, within politics. It’s one big happy family that you’re not in. And on a final note, he was at the helm, as supreme court justice while Muslims were raping young girls up and down the length of England. And what did he do about that?
Lord sumption a man of wisdom, the brain of Brittan a man of LOGOS, truth and freedom
has the courage and determination to challenge the official Government narrative of the legal aspect of irrational Decrees and Measures Well done L,S
@White Elephant
You are correct in asserting the Crown is behind this, but the Crown in question is not the royal family but rather the Crown Corporation centred in the City of London, which is its own jurisdiction, and not a part of the UK.
There are several comments above that show up their writers as people who have forgotten the ‘separation of powers’ principle of parliamentary democracy. It should be remembered that Lord Sumption, former leader of the Supreme Court, is concerned in this discourse only with the law. He is not wading into the journalistic or scientific arena of ‘pandemic’ commentary. So he engaged only with the question of the legality of the Johnson government’s COV-19 measures. His ‘I do not doubt the seriousness of the pandemic’ amounts to no more than his making clear that he is not engaging in COV politics, for such politics is not even tangentially related to the aw. The first-class legal mind for which Lord Sumption is famous was evident throughout his discourse: E.g., he did a crisp delineation of the classic issue of statutory law and its obligation to subsume the moral law, thereby illustrating very clearly the Johnson government’s serious failure to grasp this. Surely everyone must be able to see that Lord Sumption simply cleared the decks with his ‘seriousness of the pandemic’: It is not with that issue that he is bothered. Rather, he is fully engaged with the need to point out to the public that the Coronavirus Act 2020 is a defective statute that does not fit into the body of this country’s statutory law, and is therefore not supported by it. And that is a magnificent argument/weapon he handed the champions of truth in the COV debate.
Stevie57. ”Why are the current supreme court judges keeping quiet? They should be protecting our rights because they are still in a position to do so.”………..The Supreme Court was set up by Blair to save his Tratorous ass Cost £Millions ……..Even though at the time he KNEW they had NO voice as the EU courts over ruled them!
They are not protecting OUR rights as they never have Just another of Blairs costly QUANGO’S
English Tom,
I know all about the Crown corporation of the City of London (Rothschild) but my point is correct about Charles and Philip wanting rapid depopulation of the earth. Prince Philips wants to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to kill of humanity. Charming.
But the point is that the judiciary, the police and the armed forces swear fealty to the Crown and the figurehead of the crown IS the royal family; meaning that no policeman would dare arrest any member of the monarchy and no judge will sentence any, let alone any solicitor/QC prosecuting one. Let us also NOT forget that Elizabeth II has committed treason by ratifying every treaty taking the UK into Europe, breaking her coronation oath to the nations of the UK.
It is believed that the Crown serves the Rothschilds, who have them in check, courtesy of the assassination of the Romanovs. And another reason to prove that Hitler, WASN’T working for the Rothschilds, was the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936 who was a clear supporter of Hitler. The whole Wallis Simpson was a smokescreen, no different to UK declaring war on Germany for her invading Poland. But regardless, Charles and Philip are odious and the Queen has committed treason.
Quote:Covid measures will be seen as a ‘monument of collective hysteria and folly ??
Similar to Tulip mania in Holland in mid XVII Century ….IMHO.
Law always messes with definitions and the use of “subsume” is backwards here(Sophie Johnson comment) You would want the moral law to subsume the statutory law. We speak of the “spirit of the law” precisely because pure legislation is impossible and makes “an ass” of the law, in another old saying, so that when we are too legalistic tyrants have a way in.
David DeGraw’s 2010 publication “The Road to WWII” exposed the efforts of the banking cartel to destroy the economy as a war against the middle classes of the world. He saw their effort at the time as their last card to play for compete control and domination, but he did not see the joker in their hand they were planning to play ten years later, which was the present Coronavirus pandemic, to be used as a pretext to lock us down, isolate us, and make us increasing depended on their fiat handouts, while they ushered in UN Agenda 21 (the Great Reset) for their completed dominance and our total ruin. Although he is referring to the 2008 economic crisis at the time, the following extract from his book perfectly describes what is happening now and why:
“When we analyze our current crisis, focusing on the past few years of economic activity blinds us to the history and context that are vital to understanding the root cause. What we have been experiencing is not the result of an unforeseen economic crash that appeared out of the blue with the collapse of the housing market. It was certainly not brought on by people who bought homes they couldn’t afford. To frame this crisis around a debate on economic theory misses the point entirely. To even blame it on greedy bankers, while essentially accurate, also misses the most vital point.
This crisis is the direct result of a strategic economic attack on the existence of a middle class and democracy worldwide. The stock market and economy have become weapons of mass oppression manipulated by an imperial banking cartel to impose order and exploit the masses. This crisis boldly represents the manifest evolution of the fascist spirit reasserting itself as the dominant ideology.
Any fairytale notions of the United States being a democratic republic built on the rule of law have been utterly dispelled. As a nation we have been bred and conditioned to be dangerously naive to the darker forces which operate beyond the spotlight of the mainstream media. We have been blinded to what has been developing throughout the world.
The economic imperialism that has now blown-back to the United States and Europe has been evolving for decades and can be directly traced back to the end of World War II, to the birth of the CIA, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.”