But are 70% of the Public really in favour of Lockdown?
Today, after much speculation, Nigel Farage and Richard Tice announced their intention to relaunch the Brexit Party as REFORM UK, and say their new party will fight against lockdowns as "they don't work".
In a joint article to their party members and The Telegraph the two leaders say clearly that "Lockdowns don't work" and their new party will back a policy of "focused protection" from Coronavirus for the most vulnerable, to allow the rest of the population to develop herd immunity.
The announcement means that REFORM UK will effectively become the real (and only) opposition to the government, a roll that should be performed by Keir Starmer and the Labour Party (begging the question what is the point of an opposition party if they are not opposing the government?) but Farage and Tice will have to rely on political campaigning outside of the Commons, not that their position outside the establishment hindered them securing a Brexit win in 2016.
If you believe the Polls, then Nigel Farage has a huge uphill battle on his hands, as they are all reporting that the vast majority are in favour of the lockdown and think that the Government are doing a great job controlling a virus with a frighteningly low death rate. However, we saw exactly the same bullshit during the run up to Brexit, where poll after poll claimed everyone thought the EU was a super-dooper utopia and not a bunch of authoritarian nutjobs who got a hardon telling us all what to do. We saw the same with the 2016 US election, with all of the Polls stating categorically that Clinton would win only for Trump to take victory. Polls are only really ever designed to tell a story, they're pseudoscience, and, most of the time, complete bollocks.
In the latest such poll, by Ipsos MORI, the message is that everyone, but a few conspiracy theorists, are happily behind the programme to keep us all safe from the plague. The big thing that Ben and his colleagues want you to take away from all this is the swathe of green that shows that the vast majority have 'the right thinking' (hence the choice of green allocated for those answering the 'right' way). It is, in reality, utter nonsense. As Youtube political commentator Politico pointed out to our Ben (before Ben realised that he'd been rumbled and blocked him) these are loaded questions, designed to elicit a particular response.
As the youtube vlogger points out ".. It's a charade. The question and the reasons are designed to manufacture totally false assumptions to deliver the required answers which Alex (Boris) Johnson will then use to claim that everyone supports his insanity".
He goes on to say "hidden in the question is the presumption that all the measures work"
and skillfully debunks these ridiculous stunts, as he, like Farage, can smell bullshit a mile off.
In the video he gives a better, and unbiased list of questions that Ipsos MORI SHOULD have asked. These include:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statements?:
1. When utilising pandemic modelling, it is useful to take into account the experience and past performance of the modeller rather than to disregard it.
2. Coronavirus rules that turn out to be based on faulty / missing data or faulty modelling should be disregarded / revoked.
3. Coronavirus rules that do not have a clear evidential basis should be disregarded / revoked.
4. If the harm the Coronavirus rules cause outweighs the benefit, they should be disregarded / revoked.
5. A tried and tested response to a pandemic is preferable to a new and untested response.
6. A broad approach to a pandemic, including but not limited to issues of personal liberty, is preferable to a narrow response that purports to target the immediate issue at hand but ignores other issues including potentially inherent risks with potentially lethal consequences.
7. Those in authority in times of crisis, or presumed crisis, should be held accountable for their decisions and potentially be subject to punitive legal consequences.
These are a much better set of questions, and we would go as far as to say, that the response would score just as high, if not higher, than those asked by MORI.
These are the questions that nobody is currently asking. Save for a few outlets like Un-locked; Vision News and Talk Radio, most of the media are happy to push the killer-plague narrative. But Nigel Farage has always been a political outsider, and dared to say what others won't. He will, no doubt, be treated like a crackpot by the MSM exactly the same as they did over the EU, and we all know how wrong they were on that.