"Deploy the the New Variant" - Should the Police be investigating charges of Terrorism?

Leaked WhatsApp messages from former Health Secretary, Matt Hancock

As I have mentioned previously, the Telegraph newspaper (a conservative leaning British daily broadsheet) has been given access to tens of thousands of WhatsApp messages sent to or from Matt Hancock, the health secretary in the UK, during the pandemic. They have named these ‘The Lockdown Files’, in an obvious attempt to ride the ‘Twitter Files’ wave.

Whilst this is inevitably a limited hangout, where we get outraged about the things reported and ignore even more scandalous wrongdoings, Matt is being thrown under the bus and as I can’t stand the man, I am still enjoying the leaks.

One of today’s stories looks at messages from December 2020 where Matt discusses changing behaviours in the UK. On 13 December 2020, in an exchange with civil servant, Damon Poole, Matt says “We frighten the pants of everyone with the new strain”. Damon replies “Yep that’s what will get proper bahviour (sic) change” to which Matt says, “When do we deploy the new variant?”

Isabel Oakeshott, the woman responsible for leaking the messages, wrote a good article yesterday called “The dreadful consequence of Matt Hancock’s lockdown scare tactics”.

In the article she provides a graph showing the percentage of children suffering from mental health problems in 2020.

She says those responsible for “Project Fear” had no idea about how it would affect the most vulnerable in society. The article talks about the tragic suicide of a 15 year old boy called Mark who hanged himself after fearing another lockdown was coming. There are plenty more tragic examples and we know that lockdowns caused incalculable damage.

But should the police be investigating these messages and I don’t say this lightly, on charges of terrorism? The police were all too happy to arrest people for walking outside or for sitting on park benches so I’m sure they working on it as we speak.

Terrorism is defined in the Terrorism Act 2000. Part I of the text details how terrorism is to be interpreted.

1 Terrorism: interpretation.

(1) In this Act “terrorism” means the use or threat of action where -

• (a) the action falls within subsection (2),

• (b) the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or a section of the public, and

• (c) the use or threat is made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause.

So for something to be an act of terrorism, firstly there must be the use or threat of action. Check. “We frighten the pants of everyone” and “deploy the new variant” might sound like two colleagues joking around but when those jokes lead to action and that action kills people, to me that sounds like terrorism.

Imagine if a couple of Muslim men decided to frighten the pants off everyone. To do so, they went to an underground tube station and shouted '‘deploy the bomb'. Chaos would ensue and people would be running all over the place. In this fictional scenario, sadly some people fall on to the tracks and die. There is no doubt that the police would arrest these two on terrorism charges. Is there any difference in what Matt Hancock did?

Next, the criteria in subsection (a), (b) and (c) must be met for this to be terrorism. (a) says the action must fall within subsection (2) but I’ll look at that below.

Subsection (b) says the use or threat is designed to influence the government or to intimidate the public or section of the public. It seems all three of these apply here. Matt Hancock used terror to influence the government to keep lockdowns and to intimidate the public to change their behaviour.

Finally subsection (c) says the threat must be made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious or ideological cause. With the leaks of Matt’s messages showing how he was using the crisis to further his career, I think it is very reasonable to say this test has been met. I would even argue that this was for the purpose of advancing his ideological lockdown cause as well.

So, in my opinion, his actions meet the definition of terrorism in subsection (1) if the action itself falls within subsection (2).

(2) Action falls within this subsection if it—

(a) involves serious violence against a person,

(b )involves serious damage to property,

(c) endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action,

(d) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public, or

(e) is designed seriously to interfere with or seriously to disrupt an electronic system.

I think it can reasonably be argued that by causing so much unnecessary fear in people it (c) endangered their lives and/or (d) created a serious risk to the health or safety of the public.

There have been a number of studies connecting fear with death. This one from the 1940s is called ‘Voodoo Death’ and looked at scientific reasons for supernatural deaths. The author, Walter Cannon, speculated that fear can trigger a rush of hormones that can stop the heart and kill someone.

Later studies confirmed these findings with heart attacks rising during earthquakes, financial catastrophes and civil unrest. However, stress didn’t just affect the heart. Stress chemicals go all around the body and can cause muscles to break down. As the muscles break down, their proteins get into the bloodstream and then into the kidneys. The kidneys become overwhelmed and start shutting down, which in turn causes poisoning in other parts of the body.

This process can happen suddenly but more often it is a dragged out process with constant muscle strain and emotional exhaustion. In animals this is called ‘capture myopathy’. In captured animals this can kill 1 in 10 and for high risk animals this can be as high as 50 percent.

Extreme shocks can kill people who otherwise seemed healthy. The curse of humanity is that our emotions tend to us to interpret non-capture situations the same way a zebra trapped in an enclosure with a large, intimidating animal might.

Financial collapse, the death of a loved one, being trapped in a situation that triggers a phobia, or repeated abuse at school or work, trigger the same physical response that animals get in what they perceive as life-or-death situations without any hope of escape.

People who feel trapped experience capture myopathy, the same way that animals do. The body pumps out the same cocktail of drugs that, in the short term, gives muscles a burst of energy, but in the long run or when overdone, simply rips them apart.

So there is a clear link between fear and death. Therefore, Matt Hancock’s actions, again in my opinion, pass all the criteria required to be classed as terrorism. It’s in the word - he literally caused the population to be terrified, which in turn killed many of them.

Of course, his defence will be that this was all necessary to save lives during a pandemic. But I think we are getting to the stage now where this can easily be successfully challenged. And even with this defence, he shouldn’t get off Scott-free. He should have to argue bloody damn hard to show that he actually has a defence. Imagine the two Muslim men in my hypothetical example above - would they just be let go if they said ‘we did it for the good of everyone else’. No, they would be arrested there and then.

So come on Met Police, show everybody you are still apolitical and investigate Matt Hancock on domestic terrorism charges. The man used terror designed to intimidate the public, its purpose was to advance his political career and further the ideological cause of lockdowns. And those actions endangered people’s lives and created a serious public health risk. In fact, worse than that, it actually killed a lot of people and maybe still is. It’s all there in black and white in the Terrorism Act 2000.

The police must investigate Hancock now or forever lose our trust. They were all too eager to arrest business owners that carried on working during the pandemic so they must now show they are also eager to investigate a politician on terrorism charges.