For once, Johnson may have performed a public service
September 29, 2024 5:57 pm(Updated 5:58 pm)
Boris Johnson is publishing his memoir, timed to coincide with the Conservative Party conference, in his usual attention-seeking manner and written in his familiar gratingly-florid style.
Political autobiographies tend to be solipsistic attempts to shore up their author’s place in history so most are very dreary. Given Johnson’s shameful record in office, his selfishness and his sorry relationship to the truth, his book would not normally serve as anything more than a sad reminder of his party’s descent into stupidity that led to such brutal rejection by the electorate.
Yet one nugget leaps out: his suggestion the Covid-19 pandemic was sparked by some kind of leak from a laboratory in Wuhan rather than zoonotic transmission from an animal species.
“The awful thing about the whole Covid catastrophe is that it appears to have been entirely man-made, in all its aspects,” he writes. “It now looks overwhelmingly likely that the mutation was the result of some botched experiment in a Chinese lab. Some scientists were clearly splicing bits of virus together like the witches in Macbeth – eye of bat and toe of frog – and oops, the frisky little critter jumped out of the test tube and started replicating all over the world.”
This allegation, reported by The Mail on Sunday, is significant since Johnson was prime minister when a strange new coronavirus erupted in that central Chinese city, spreading death, fear and economic devastation around the planet (and nearly causing his own demise).
The former prime minister becomes the highest profile leader after Donald Trump to state this suspicion in public, although it has become an increasingly widely-held public view in the 55 months since I first began probing China’s cover-up of Covid’s birth.
Like the former United States president, Johnson is a politician with a history of deceit who is detested by many foes. But that does not mean he is always wrong.
It would be good to think we have learned from the daft tribalism that has clouded the debate over Covid’s origins since the outcome is so important to guard against another pandemic.
Johnson’s statement, coming from such a pivotal source, should spark serious exploration of the issues at last in Britain. Politicians, civil servants, key scientists and the intelligence agencies need to be put on the spot and quizzed under oath over their knowledge of the outbreak – especially given all the mounting evidence of an organised attempt at the highest levels to stifle debate over the origins by branding the idea of a laboratory leak as “conspiracy theory”.
Last week, Professor Kevin Fong, former national clinical adviser in emergency preparedness at NHS England, described the pandemic as the “biggest national emergency this country has faced since World War Two” as he spoke movingly – and often tearfully – about the medical response at the Covid hearings.
This inquiry is costing taxpayers £200m. Yet when former cabinet minister Michael Gove – another central player in Britain’s response – said “there is a significant body of judgement that believes that the virus itself was man made”, he was shut down quickly for straying into this “somewhat divisive issue”.
This is unacceptable. There is not enough space to run through the complex debate here, suffice to say there is no definitive proof yet over the origins. Intense efforts to find a host creature that might have led a virus from bats living hundreds of miles away to cross over into humans in Wuhan – with attempts to blame creatures such as pangolins and racoon dogs – have led to suggestions that the virus erupted in a wet market.
This tired theory – which keeps bouncing back like a bad penny – has been firmly rejected by China’s authorities and the world’s top coronavirologist. It does not match evidence on earliest cases, nor much research trying to date first infections.
The alternative case – raised by Johnson – has grown steadily stronger with each crumb of evidence. There was always valid suspicion over a pandemic erupting in the city that is home to the world’s foremost research lab for Sars-like viruses, especially when it was found to have known concerns over safety practices.
This lab collected thousands of bat viruses from southern China and south-east Asia, but hid its database. It carried out high-risk “gain-of-function” research to boost infectivity of coronaviruses in low-level security environments, derided as “wild west” even by its funders in Washington.
And we learned that shortly before the pandemic, Wuhan scientists proposed with their partners in the United States to create viruses with the defining feature of Covid’s virus – the “furin cleavage site” that enables more efficient entry into human cells and is not found on similar types of coronavirus. This lab leak theory was shored up by a series of shocking leaks and revelations swirling around some of the most prominent figures pushing the zoonotic case.
Yet this impassioned debate even divides intelligence agencies in the United States – although at least Washington has made some efforts to establish the truth, even if the discussions in Congress have been depressingly partisan.
In Britain there has been only a thudding official silence, despite similar concerns over the role of some leading scientists and institutions – including Sir Patrick Vallance, recently appointed science minister by the Labour Government.
Science relies on openness and the vigorous clash of ideas. Yet the issues at stake here go beyond the core question of what caused Covid-19 and the role of Beijing in covering up the initial outbreak, which inflamed the impact with terrible and tragic consequences.
They raise questions over regulation of risky experiments, the role of Western funding bodies, the behaviour of leading scientists, the failures of global public health bodies, the duplicity of academic journals, the patsy reporting of naive journalists, even the corruption of universities by Chinese cash.
Behind all this lies the stench of elitist arrogance and kowtowing of democratic institutions towards a repulsive dictatorship. For once, Johnson may have performed a public service.
