London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Covid-19 reverse psychology: Did Johnson play the left by ‘pretending’ he didn’t want a lockdown so it could get public support?

Covid-19 reverse psychology: Did Johnson play the left by ‘pretending’ he didn’t want a lockdown so it could get public support?

The ‘liberal-left’ narrative that the UK Tory government wanted to pursue Covid-19 ‘herd immunity’ instead of a lockdown has been shattered by official filings which appears to show the opposite was the case.

The phrase ‘smoking gun’ is oft-overused, but it is surely appropriate in relation to the report in the Daily Telegraph newspaper that the UK government struck a deal worth £119m with an American advertising company, OMD Group, urging people to ‘Stay Home, Stay Safe’ a full three weeks before Boris Johnson ordered a lockdown.

Think about what this means. It’s safe to assume that if this big money deal was struck on 2nd March, the preparations began a lot earlier – in February, or more likely, even earlier than that. You don’t just set up an advertising campaign with a major US agency in a couple of hours.

What does this tell us? Well, basically everything we thought we knew about how Britain came to be locked down on 23rd March is probably false.

The dominant narrative is that Bojo, the hapless ‘clown’ and his Keystone Cops Cabinet were pushed into lockdown. Pushed by public opinion. Pushed by the ‘experts’. Pushed by the Premier League. Pushed by the ‘Left’. Pushed by Piers Morgan. Pushed by ‘Professor Doom’ Neil Ferguson and his ludicrous ‘modelling’.

But if they had already arranged a £119m lockdown advertising campaign, which referenced emergency economic measures in its communication strategy, it would mean the decision to lockdown had already been taken many weeks earlier. At the same time, the government was giving every impression that they weren’t going to lockdown.

Why did they do this? Well, put yourself in the shoes of Johnson and his top aide Dominic Cummings. If a Conservative government, and one which has already been denounced as by the liberal-left for being pro-Brexit, and anti-free movement, had said openly in February that they were planning to lock Britain down there would have been an outcry. The big question for the government was: how can we lock the country down, without stirring the liberal-left still further and provoking mass public opposition. What if the answer then was: pretend that we don’t want a lockdown? Then the binary, groupthink ‘culture warriors’ would be sure to press for one! They would end up calling for the government to do exactly what the government had planned to do all along! High-fives all round at Number 10.

Think back to March.

Reporting on the seemingly muddled UK response to the virus then made a lot of people think that the intention was to let the virus “pass through” the community. Was this intentional?

There’s grounds for believing it was.

A much publicised report in the Sunday Times said that Dom Cummings, a hated figure for hard-core Remainers, had argued against strict measures at a private meeting at the end of February. No 10 denied the claim, calling it a fabrication.

But the report made an impact. If ‘Deadly Dom’ wants herd immunity then surely we need to do the opposite and lockdown, was the Pavlovian response of many on the left.

Then there was the reporting, or rather misreporting of Premier Johnson’s “take it on the chin”television interview of 5th March. Johnson said that one of the theories (he didn’t mention herd immunity by name) of dealing with the virus was “that perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go and allow the disease, as it were, to move through the population, without taking as many draconian measures.”

That was like a red rag to a bull to those who were already convinced the government’s ‘response’ was too laid-back. But it is interesting to note that the Prime Minister wasn’t advocating ‘taking it on the chin’ – simply saying it was one theory that had been put forward. He actually said a few seconds later: “I think it would be better if we take all the measures that we can now to stop the peak of the disease being as difficult for the NHS as it might be”.

Johnson was actually hinting about more restrictions to come, but all the liberal-left could hear was the opposite.

By getting his opponents to push for a lockdown, by making them believe he opposed one, Johnson guaranteed that when a lockdown was finally announced, there’d be a much wider acceptance of it. Throughout the year the pattern has continued. The great enablers of the government’s Covid authoritarianism have been those on the left, for instance Richard Burgon MP, whose line of attack has not been to oppose Tory restrictions but to say that the restrictions either don’t go far enough or were being eased too soon.


The very same people who had been calling Johnson an ‘extremist’, even a ‘fascist’ before March, have ended up being his witting (or unwitting) accomplices. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that the government has played its opponents like a violin. Now here’s a thought.

Suppose that instead of being a ’clown’ and a ’buffoon’ Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was actually far smarter than anyone gives him credit for? We’ve all read mystery stories when the bar room idiot, who plays at being drunk, is actually the very sober criminal mastermind. Could the ‘clown’ actually be playing the clown in order to get the opposition to pressurise him to do the things he wants to do anyway?

And what about Dom Cummings? Love him or loathe him, he ain’t dumb. He’s a student of Russian history. He is said to quote Lenin. And if he admires Vladimir Ilyich, he could be an admirer of Felix Dzerzhinsky too. And how did ‘Iron Felix’ keep the show on the road after 1917? He set up the ‘Trust‘. The Bolshevik Counter Espionage operation which controlled, and misdirected, the anti-Bolshevik ‘White Russian’ opposition.

The opposition ended up calling for things that the government wanted them to call for. Rather like Labour going into the last election pledging for a ‘2nd referendum' on Europe, or pushing for a lockdown in 2020. By supporting a lockdown, while giving the impression they opposed one, were Johnson and his government playing chess, when everyone else, who thought they were being so clever, was playing checkers?

The OMD deal is our strongest clue yet that the ‘reluctant lockdowners’ had it planned for quite some time.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
×