President Trump has said the most important thing anyone has said — and the most important thing anyone ever will say — on the coronavirus pandemic.
‘WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF’.
Yes!
It’s at times like this that I’m reminded just how lucky we are — those of us who live in the U.S. and the UK at any rate — to have leaders whose default position tends towards liberty rather than authoritarianism.
Some world leaders — Putin, definitely; Macron, President Bieber and others, probably — appear to be relishing the opportunity which the coronavirus pandemic has given them to flex their authoritarian muscles with draconian restrictions on freedom.
It’s quite possible that President Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson may reluctantly have to go the same way. But the key part is this reluctance: both men want to get their nations as close to things were before as quickly as possible. Neither, I don’t think, is thinking: “Mwahahaha! Now is the chance to expand government beyond my wildest dreams.”
In Boris Johnson’s case this liberal — in the old fashioned sense of the word — tendency is evident whenever he speaks about the new restrictions he feels it is necessary to impose on the country.
It was with deep regret, for example, that Boris finally decided to follow the example of Spain, Italy and France and close restaurants, cafes, bars, pubs, nightclubs, theatres, cinemas and gyms.
Boris said he was reluctant to ‘go against the freedom-loving instincts of the British people.’
This is important, refreshing and encouraging. Imagine how very different it would have been if a Socialist like Jeremy Corbyn were prime minister or if Hillary Clinton had won their countries’ elections.
The restrictions we’re experiencing now would be just the beginning of their controlling masterplan to socialise everything.
Instead, thank goodness, we find ourselves led by men — Trump and Boris — who are horrified rather than quietly delighted about the prospects of their countries being turned into borderline police states.
Which is doubly important given how many of our commentators and members of the general public are being turned into obsessive, hysterical control freaks by this pandemic.
Here, for example, is a radio show host called Tom Swarbrick dismissing ‘freedom’ as just another ‘ideology’ we can happily dispense with in this crisis. [Swarbrick used to be an adviser to Theresa May and so, is supposedly a conservative. This gives you an idea of just how leftwards the Conservative party has drifted over the years)
Like Trump, Boris is not about giving up the hard-won freedoms of Western Civilisation lightly.
His political hero — he once said — was Mayor Vaughan in Jaws who kept the beaches open, despite tremendous public pressure to have them closed.
In 2006 he told an audience at Lloyds in London:
The real hero of Jaws is the mayor. A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beaches open. OK, in that instance he was actually wrong. But in principle, we need more politicians like the Mayor. We are often the only obstacle against all the nonsense which is really a massive conspiracy against the taxpayer.
Sure, as Boris himself admitted, ‘in that instance’ the Mayor was ‘actually wrong.’
But on the broader principle Mayor Vaughan, Boris Johnson and Trump are all right to sacrifice our freedoms reluctantly, briefly and only when all other options have been exhausted.
We should be grateful to have such men in charge in these fraught times when so many siren voices are trying to lure us onto the rocks of authoritarianism, control freakery and tyranny.