In an email to Labour Party supporters, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor has had an about-turn on the speed of introducing lockdown. In an email begging for donations just days before Len McCluskey threatened to withdraw Unite funding, Dodds claimed “The Tory government was too slow into lockdown” as if the Labour Party would have acted differently. Not that she said so at the time…
As Guido revealed back in April, the Shadow Chancellor was conversely loudly opposing calls for stricter measures. Anneliese Dodds publicly clashed with Rory Stewart’s call to enact harsher measures on Westminster Hour on 8 March:
“I completely take on board what Rory was saying but I’ve been very very impressed by the world of the Chief Medical Officer and Chief Scientific Advisor… the problem is if you move immediately into, for example measures like stopping large scale events, that can have unintended consequences because people can then congregate in other areas that are actually even more likely to cause contagion… I really feel strongly on this.“
Dodds went on to support the Government’s plan, emphasising the need to listen to the SAGE advice:
“The Action Plan that the Government has set out, and I mean okay the Government are of a different political persuasion to mine, but they have stated that at some point we will have to shift from the containment stage to the delay stage…They set out the risks from potentially doing that too early. I’m not talking about just medical professionals being involved in this [decision to lock down], it’s also got to be those who understand about the set up of the social care system, of other public services, they need to be part of this decision.”
Dodds was publicly, loudly, and passionately opposing Rory Stewart’s call for school closures and other strict lockdown measures. Now she’s trying to fundraise off the back of pretending she didn’t support the Government’s lockdown strategy line by line at the time. Sir Keir has a challenger for the title of Captain Hindsight…
