Now we have passed the 14 day point after July 19 we can review if Freedom Day has been the disaster that so many media-amplified experts warned us about. Predicting the future is a sport best reserved for the bookies, though the Covid data continues to disprove yet more prophesies of doom and gloom from these so-called experts. Two weeks ago, 1,200 “international experts” came out with the prediction that Boris’s plan to end lockdown in July was a “threat to the world”. And the left still think Gove must regret his anti-experts moment during the referendum…
Among those ringing the alarm bell included government advisors in New Zealand, Israel and Italy, along with 1,200 signatories to a letter in The Lancet. The piece – pompously entitled “The Declaration” – claimed that Freedom Day was “dangerous and premature”, and cited the 100,000 cases a day figure.
“We believe the government is embarking on a dangerous and unethical experiment, and we call on it to pause plans to abandon mitigations on July 19, 2021.”
They must have been really sure to make such a bombastic statement…
And who was behind this letter? None other than Carole Cadwalladr. A week after it was published she took to Substack to boast about the effort:
“For weeks, they were seen as fringe voices. At the Citizens we have done everything we can to amplify them. This week, we finally succeeded. It’s just far, far too late.”
Carole’s The Citizens group then went on to host an “emergency summit”, broadcast three days before freedom day. Again she was delighted at the raft of international ‘experts’ lining up to slam the government’s strategy. She described the epidemiological circle-jerk as “an intervention: Britain is the reckless addict endangering not only its own health but that of the world”
“This summit was the equivalent of friends and family coming together to tell us that we can’t run away from this virus. That our denial is only making it worse. That this is “murderous”, “diabolical”, “reckless”.”
As she accurately observed, the press – i, Guardian, Independent and FT – lapped it up…
Yesterday’s Covid stats saw yet another fall, now down to below 22,000 – a 12% drop on last Monday.
Guido can’t remember a time 1,200 so-called experts were proven so wrong in one fell swoop…
Co-conspirators will be amused, if not unsurprised, to learn of Carole Cadwalladr’s latest legal flop. The Citizens – which counts Carole amongst its board – along with six MPs and Lords, had been fighting the government over claims Boris had “unlawfully failed to act compatibly with his public law duties in refusing to establish a public inquiry” over Russian interference in UK elections. A high court judge ruled the case was “unarguable”…
The judge ruled that Carole and the six politicians were “The claimants’ concerns exist at the level of politics, not as a matter of law.” Carole not knowing the difference between party political grievances and matters of the law is hardly new…
The politician claimants were:
- Chris Bryant (Lab)
- Ben Bradshaw (Lab)
- Caroline Lucas (Green)
- Baroness Wheatcroft (Cross Bench)
- Alyn Smith (SNP)
- Lord Strasburger (LibDem)
Perhaps Carole should spend more time revising her legal strategy, and less time questioning Dominic Cummings on Substack…
Dominic Cummings’s Substack fan club certainly kept him busy over the weekend. So far, he’s received over 400 questions and sent 100 replies on topics varying from Corbyn and the culture wars, to Biden and border policy. Guido’s collated the best material below…
The most entertaining exchange was with Carole Cadwalladr, who forked out the £10 fan club fee to fire off a five-paragraph diatribe on her political grievances, lambasting Cummings on everything from Vote Leave campaign spending to his involvement in Boris’s election. The latter of which she adds: “by your own reckoning, this has led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths”…
Cummings responded in equal length; on Cadwalladr’s claims that the Electoral Commission [EC] acted “unlawfully“, Cummings accuses it of being “an incompetent and confused entity”:
“Remember: the EC literally refused repeatedly to take evidence from the key 6 people involved!! […] Yes they came to [those] findings but the most extraordinary thing was they literally hired lawyers to fight lawyers hired by the crucial 6 to try to force them to take evidence from us.”
In response to allegations over Vote Leave’s relationship with Cambridge Analytica, Cummings added:
“Remember: CA had nothing to do with us, we never had the infamous Facebook data your mate Wylie had, there was no conspiracy!”
Turning to Carole’s ongoing campaign to spuriously ruin Darren Grimes’s life, Dom has pointed out the failure of the Electoral Commission to interview key witness during their biased investigation, which was “of course partly why the courts threw out the Grimes case, cos the EC had totally botched it… Also NB. the courts threw out Grimes case but this got no coverage cos of covid!” Carole is yet to respond…
Read the rest of Cummings’s views below:
Guido is happy to report news of more chaos from Arron Banks’s defamation case against crazy Carole. Despite two apologies to Banks so far, and a collapse in her ‘truth defence’ last November, she carries on the fight. The inevitable conclusion is much delayed because she keeps switching law firms. Banks has now been advised that she’s fallen out with the left-wing law firm Bindmans, and has now hired another law firm to represent her. Banks reckons she’s now onto her fifth law firm – hardly a vote of confidence in her argument from the legal community…
Unfortunately for Carole, one of her more recent legal representatives, RPC, represented the Electoral Commission in a former action between Banks and the Commission, so is likely to be conflicted out. Law firm number six will no doubt have a go…
To remind co-conspirators, Cadwalladr has now admitted that there was no evidence to back up her claims that the Russians financed the Brexit campaign, nor that Arron Banks was involved in shady deals with the Russians. She’s now claiming a novel ‘public interest’ defence. In normal circumstances she’d have given up, though given it’s not her money there’s no reason not to run her defence into a head-on collision with the facts. Crowdfunding mugs are paying the bills…
Arron tells Guido “the situation is farcical”, despite having received two written apologies from Carole “she carries on like a demented die hard for nothing.” She long ago
“… dropped any justification of truth ( because she had no evidence ) but is now saying it’s in the public interest to lie about me because it’s a matter of great public interest. A novel defence, but since it’s not her money at stake she seems intent on running her defence into a head on collision with the facts. The accusation was that I was in a secret relationship with Russia over campaign finance has no evidence, other than I had a lunch or two with the ambassador!”
Perhaps she is just playing for time, delaying receiving the hefty final legal bill…
You may have forgotten that the Arron Banks defamation case against Carole Cadwalladr is still ongoing, given she dropped her defence of truth back in November. Remember all those Russian collusion allegations she pushed so hard? No evidence presented whatsoever and that will cost her (or rather her backers) a fortune. This has not stopped her milking crowdfunding mugs though; she is continuing the battle with Banks and attempting to mitigate her costs with a novel argument. Namely that despite there being no truth to the allegations which she made around the world to much acclaim, they were made in the public interest. Essentially running up her crowdfunded legal bill to argue that her disinformation was in the public interest. Some chutzpah!
Carole’s crowdfunding website itself has unbelievably resulted in her having to make yet another apology to Banks. This time after her she tried to raise money on the back of repeating the claim of a secret Russian relationship with Banks – despite having admitted it was untrue. A weary sounding Arron Banks tells Guido “Yet another apology – it’s about time Carole dropped her court case, apologise and stop wasting her donors’ money and the court’s time.” That would, however, require Carole and her backers to finally accept that it was all a fantasy…
Replying to Carole Cadwalladr, Nick Robinson tweets…
“Bad journalism is only talking to people you agree with and asking them questions you think you already know the answer to.”
