Oliver kamm — a response to patrick maxwell | thearticle

_Earlier this week, Oliver Kamm wrote a column for this site in which he asked why people who voted for Brexit also tended to be sceptical about restrictions associated with Covid. Patrick

Maxwell responded to that column, taking issue with the central thesis — you can read that response here. Oliver has come back with a further comment, which is here below._ Patrick Maxwell’s

response to my article about the overlap between “lockdown sceptics” (not a term I accept, but let’s not quibble) and Brexiters is articulate but inaccurate. First, I explicitly did not

base my argument on the output of conspiracy theorists such as David Icke and Piers Corbyn, but rather on the views of academics and politicians. I hence took the Brexit/anti-lockdown case

at its strongest, rather than as urged by fringe figures. Second, I did not pose the issue of trade-offs as protecting lives versus supporting the economy. On the contrary, I pointed to the

broad consensus of economists that “the economy in a pandemic [is] inextricably linked to perceptions of public safety”. The problem with the self-designated sceptics is that they’ve

misunderstood this. They’ve misread the nature of the trade-off, by elevating ideology over evidence. Third, Maxwell has misquoted me in a subtle but significant way in order to depict me as

urging conformity in public discourse. I did not refer to “ideologues who fail to recognise the truth”, as if debate were impermissible once experts had delivered their views. My words were

(emphasis added) “ideologues who fail to recognise _this_ truth”, referring to the fact — for it is a fact — that public policies necessarily involve trade-offs. This puts a rather

different complexion on the sentiment, as I trust he will acknowledge.