This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
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Tory COVID rebels proclaim ‘attacks on liberty’ while voting for authoritarian policies

By:   []

Date: 2021-12

There was something rather chilling about last night’s Conservative Party rebellion against Boris Johnson’s new COVID regulations.

A short time after Johnson had pleaded his case in front of the 1922 Committee, 99 of his MPs decided to ignore him and vote in the name of liberty against emergency measures designed to protect the public and NHS against the Omicron COVID variant. Other Tories, such as the former prime minister Theresa May, abstained.

The size of the rebellion was shocking enough but the strength and heedlessness on display may signal a hitherto unidentified mutation in the party. It suggests that right-wing MPs are tiring of the Johnson premiership simply on the grounds that it is too moderate.

The build-up to the vote, in which the government was seeking to pass temporary laws involving mask-wearing, compulsory vaccination of NHS staff and increased vaccination checks, featured several Tory MPs we are unused to hearing from. These are often people who believe their opinions and prejudices are self-evidently more telling than scientific data. One of those, Marcus Fysh, the MP for Yeovil in Somerset, got an early start with an interview on the BBC’s Today programme last Thursday morning.

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Originally an investment manager, Fysh has no scientific or medical training (he studied literature). However, he airily pronounced on Omicron, saying it might actually be a good thing. When the show’s presenter, Martha Kearney, pressed him with doubts and data, Fysh struggled and quickly reached for the self-inflating life jacket emblazoned with the words ‘British freedoms’. With his voice rising a little, he exclaimed: “I want us to talk more about the fact that we are a free country; that we are a democracy and believe in individual liberty.”

Anyone paying the smallest attention to politics over the last few years will have found these words hard to swallow. Indeed, one of the few achievements of this supremely inefficient government is to successfully attack both with unrelenting accuracy.

After all, this government’s record is unarguable. Two years ago, it suspended Parliament illegally. This was followed by a bill to introduce voter ID, which would restrict access to the ballot for many – despite the problem of voter fraud being almost non-existent in the UK.

Another proposal from this Brexit government, still smarting from fines against the Leave campaign, is to dismantle the powers of the Electoral Commission, which has recently fined the Conservative Party £17,800 for failing to declare a donation that paid for the refurbishment of Boris Johnson’s Downing Street residence. The prime minister, incidentally, has so little respect for institutions that it appears he has misled both the commission and Parliament about who actually paid for his wallpaper.

Caught between numerous self-created scandals and a raft of perpetually outraged backbenchers, Johnson is on the ropes. Last Thursday, it was on vaccine passports that Fysh channelled his colleagues’ rage, calling vaccine checks, which are common all over the world, “a massive imposition on our liberties, a massive attack on personal freedom – the freedom of association”. He concluded his radio interview with a message to the PM. “We can’t go down that path… don’t do it.”
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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/tory-covid-rebels-proclaim-attacks-on-liberty-while-voting-for-authoritarian-policies/
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