What we can learn from Sweden

It is a particular pleasure to be returning to the columns of The Spectator, more than half a century after I became editor. The paper has been part of my life for a very long time. When I was at school, more than 70 years ago, we were all told to read Harold Nicolson’s column every week, to learn the art of essay-writing. I like to think that it was still a good paper in my time, but it is a much better one now. Fraser Nelson and his team are doing an excellent job.

Our lives remain dominated by the plague, aka Covid-19. The government’s handling of it — admittedly a difficult task — has not been brilliant, but no worse than the performance of its scientific and medical advisory group (no acronym has ever been less apt than Sage). There is one obvious lesson to be learned: the lesson from Sweden. The Swedes, alone in Europe, declined to have a lockdown. The outcome, in terms of deaths and health in general, seems to have been pretty average for Europe — worse than some, better than others (including, in particular, the UK). But comparisons are difficult, given all the factors involved. However, one fact is plain. The damage to Sweden’s economy has been far less than to every other European economy. While the BBC, with its characteristic indifference to the facts, insists on referring to this as damage done by Covid, it is of course overwhelmingly done by our response, especially by lockdown. The lesson is clear. If, as widely expected, there is a second wave later this year, there must on no account be a second national lockdown. Our economic prospects are already grim enough. In any case, the notion that public policy should be based on reducing the risk of death, regardless of all other factors, is palpably absurd, and certainly not what it has been based on hitherto.