Mark Dolan: In the first woke pandemic in history, individuals have been sacrificed at the altar of hard left ideology

Freedom has become a four letter word.

Individual liberty, freedom of speech, the right to travel to or see who you wish, bodily autonomy, these were all values which two years ago we took for granted.

In fact we wagged our fingers in judgement of undemocratic countries like Russia, China and elsewhere for not having them. But how swiftly they have passed.

All for a potentially very nasty, but in relative terms mild virus, with a ninety nine percent recovery rate. Pathetic.

Three weeks to flatten the curve, became twenty months. Stay home to save the NHS, wear a mask, get the jab, socially distance, these measures could be with us on and off forever, if we don't put up a fight. You cannot comply your way out of tyranny.

You go along with these measures so they will end, which means they never will. At the start of the pandemic, most of us accepted a very short term cessation in our freedom of movement, our ability to work and our basic liberties. More fool us. That was our big, historic mistake.

As we have learnt to our cost, state control is never rowed back upon and autocracy, when yielded to, is never temporary. Boris’s so called Freedom Day is not true freedom. It’s freedom light. It’s a mildly dystopian, freedom 2.0. In March of 2020, we gave them an inch and they took a mile.

The genius entrepreneur and inventor Elon musk puts it brilliantly in this tweet.

Looking back on it, it wasn't justified even in the spring of 2020 and with hospitalisations lower and with Omicron clearly milder than a teetotal stag do, it's certainly not justified now.

It's ironic, that even though we have a Conservative government, really these measures are rooted in hard left ideology. Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford's continued enthusiasm for scientifically debatable face masks is born in my view not out of public health, but the other P – politics. I wish they would p off.

The measures have had a strong leftist flavour - controlling the population, making people stay at home, paying people not to work, borrowing billions, trashing the economy and covering peoples’ faces to mark compliance, and membership of the do-good tribe. It’s textbook Marxism.

Ask yourself why these measures have been championed and continue to be enforced by the public sector and hard left trade unions – we’ve still got masks in some schools, which should be illegal - whilst the beleaguered self-employed and many in the private sector want to see an end to this hell.

The hard left have achieve huge influence in our country, including the wokeist attacks on our culture, our history, our educational institutions, and the basic facts of human biology. And the left have had what they could only have dreamed of since the start of the pandemic, effectively a planned economy, and a template of endless state dependence, at hysterical, eye watering cost.

All of this has been achieved without winning a single vote. Aren’t they clever. Requests for furlough, stay at home orders and business closures will become an annual event. We gave them an inch, they took a mile.

These huge changes to our economy and society have all been achieved without any democratic mandate, without a single vote being cast. Ushered in via the trojan horse of a medical emergency.

The mandate to wear masks, for example, is in my view just emblematic of collectivism. Of course this doesn't even begin to touch the horrors of the Mao regime in China, but some of the techniques are familiar and the mask mandates have parallels with the idea that I sacrifice my own needs in favour of the common good and obedience to the state.

The government and the scientific community, particularly those in SAGE have in my view overplayed their hand.

When the full scale of the damage that has been done emerges, and when we compare countries that had these damaging measures and the others didn't and when we fail to find any significant difference, scientists will find it harder for us to accept any future advice.

And it gives me no pleasure to say that it will become harder for the government, to govern. We have been fed a diet of Covid hysteria for almost 2 years and I fear that those who lead us Will prove to be the boy who cried wolf once too often.

When the full horror of what we have done emerges, the anger will be palpable and I fear for public order. Let's hope and pray it doesn't come to that. Please don't take my word for it. Professor Jay Bhattacharya, one of the most respected medics on the planet from Stanford medical school in California has called lockdowns the biggest public health mistake in history.

The measures came in at the time to save lives, but they should have been limited to days or weeks, not months and years. And what those who lead us did not have the right to do was change our country and our society forever.

Nicola Sturgeon is talking about face masks for years to come. And you know what that means – that means forever. There are authoritarian political figures who will continue to wield mask mandates as the perfect entry level mechanism of control and compliance. Credit to our party-loving numpty of a prime minister Boris Johnson.

Notwithstanding his enormous appetite for red wine and birthday cake, this guy has lifted most restrictions and England is now the envy of the world, as it appears to be the first major nation to call time on the pandemic.

England is also the envy of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, where tyranny continues to reign. Anyone considering an independent Scotland, for example, should think twice about choosing to live under the exclusive rule of commander Sturgeon.

Imagine our incredible friends in Scotland not having Westminster, to temper her worst excesses. All will obey in the People's Republic of Nicola.

And my incredible friends in Wales – we have so many Welsh viewers – imagine handing the keys of that great country to Drakeford.

This is a man who closed nightclubs in Wales without evidence that was needed and who said omicron is probably as dangerous as Delta, when it was clear from South Africa it wasn’t.

Even my old mate Piers Morgan is talking common sense, must be a leap year or something.

Welcome aboard Piers, better late than never. Fear equates directly to power and control from our leaders, which is why they have leveraged it so extensively for two years.

Masks and other covid measures are all about collectivism, the sacrifice of the individual for the so called collective good. And the notion of collective good has been the weapon of some of history’s greatest tyrants.

This has been the first woke pandemic in history. In 2022, the individual, something that used to be celebrated, has been sacrificed at the altar of hard left ideology.

And emotion, morality and guilt have been leveraged to help these nasty bullies to facilitate their land grab of our rights and of our lives. Like so many now, I'm neither left nor right.

That’s an out of date metric. I'm just a liberal. And I just want to make sure that freedom, for which generations of brave souls have given their lives in the past, isn’t another casualty of this pandemic.