How Johnson and His Media Mates Created a Zombie Nation

Yet here we are, chained for a further six months by a government who dismiss our capacity for individual responsibility in favour of police state control.

Few in the media system seem willing (or able) to wave the banner for our liberty in opposition. Uncritical reporting on the extension of the Coronavirus Act, which is anathema to our values, underlines how wretchedly detached the media class are from truth. Do they not comprehend what it means that they won’t challenge the indefensible position Johnson’s men have taken against the people?

An ever-consuming Covid narrative has done much to spread fear but little to inform. The context of the virus’s severity, its potential to harm – virtually zero for the vast majority of us patient Brits – never gets a mention.

Under diktat we’re living a passionless existence. Without the facts of the risk, we are under coercion to take a mostly unnecessary medical treatment. Growing threats of an ‘oppressive inevitable’, where normal social living will be conditional upon a jab and a green digital pass, lends to a sense of being under siege.

When the political and media classes colluded against the electorate to derail Brexit, the British people were having none of it. The ‘zombie parliament’ ground to a halt with schisms exposing the mendacity at play.

Johnson framed a ‘parliament against the people’ narrative which ultimately succeeded in a sweeping victory and the demolition of the ‘rotten’ house. But now the roles have reversed.

Parliament seems to have no problem agreeing on Covid legislation, whilst we have been led by Johnson into the impassable state of a zombie nation paralysed by conflicting schisms.

Some are rallied by post-Brexit vaccine-nationalism (‘see, aren’t the EU awful?’). Others are compliant with genuine fear demanding more state control (‘we demand Covid Zero for ever’). I believe many are stuck in an apathy too afraid to ask why we are still here (‘If I close my eyes it will go all away’). And of course, a seemingly smaller number of us are adamant on how wrong the approach is – deeply suspicious of the motives of the men in sharp suits.

This is akin to a slick marketing campaign. Johnson’s men are selling a product: ‘the vaccine’. And like good salesmen they have us cornered until we all take it.

With talk of vaccinating children in August one wonders whether the September return to school will become conditional on an autumn programme of school jabs. They have done it with masks after all.

It is easy to feel demoralised right now. My sense, however, is that amidst this tyranny many ordinary Brits are quietly starting to rebel. We value freedom. And bodily autonomy remains the ultimate sovereignty.

It’s not acceptable for Oxbridge-educated MPs and their journalist mates to play sport with ‘how it’s kind of acceptable’ to cross those lines.

With his volte-face from bringer of freedom, Johnson has turned Britain inside out. He’s transplanted the rotten chaos of a dead parliament on to the nation. And the media seem willing for him to get away with it.