Kelly: "It's not real freedom - Coronovirus legislation still in place."
Mark Steyn: "Yeah, that's the important point here. They are temporarily foreswearing the use of their emergency powers. But the emergency powers - two years into the emergency - remain in place."
Only a mug would trust this lot. We've had one "Freedom Day" before - that went well! Until the emergency powers are repealed, they are just waiting for another opportunity.
This is from summer 2021.
Do you remember "Freedom Day"?
On July 19th 2021, after several delays COVID-related restrictions were lifted from several UK civil liberties. It was branded 'Freedom Day' by the central government media apparatus, and this narrative was used by the main media outlets. At the same time, Prime Minister Boris Johnson decided to cancel a 'Churchillian' speech on 'Freedom Day'. Partly, this is political theatre without much substance. Few outside the media give weight to either the Freedom Day narrative or PM Johnson's Churchillian aspirations. However, appearances are important in politics: more political meaning can be found in both Freedom Day and Johnson's Churchillian aspirations, but not much of it good.
It took less than a week for the Freedom Day narrative to age poorly. The phrase itself is used in an episode of Futurama, which is available online. In it, a patriotic celebration of freedom is comedically derailed and becomes the occasion for a hostile invasion. Given the gravity of what is at stake, this does not look good. More substantively, freedom was not restored. The 2020 Coronovirus Act, and the Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020, remain in force which is the justification given for the illiberal emergency powers that the UK Government has given itself. Not only that, but PM Johnson chose this day to announce digital vaccine passports. Parliament's Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee said that the Government has so far failed to make the scientific case, passports would disproportionately discriminate on basis of race, religion and socio-economic background and raised concerns over data protection. These have many problems, the most severe is that they would facilitate digital control of all aspects of citizen's lives. For example, the NHS app includes space for recording "information relating to the family of the individual and the individual's lifestyle and social circumstances. information which relates to the ethnic origin of the individual; information relating to the genetic biometric details were processed to uniquely identified individual; and criminal convictions or alleged criminal behavior". Parliamentarians and citizens should ask for a convincing justification for the inclusion of this and other data collection in a record of health status. This exacerbates worries caused by UK governments' extensive surveillance of and data collection on citizens; the development of a digital identity; the development of a digital currency; illiberal censorship of speech online - to name only a few worries. All this makes 'Freedom Day' as Orwellian a piece of language as Victory Gin, or anything else in 1984.