Ideas Podcast Politics
Photo: Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images

Free Exchange: lockdown vs Liberty with Jonathan Sumption

Alys Denby
20 November 2020
Photo: Fairfax Media via Getty Images via Getty Images

Share this article

set page as preferred source in google set page as preferred source in google

Few have opposed the Government’s handling of the pandemic with as much eloquence and authority as Lord Sumption.  The former supreme court judge, medieval historian and Reith lecturer doesn’t just dispute the scientific evidence, he questions the legal and constitutional justification for these restrictions on our liberty.

Listen to Lord Sumption speaking to CapX Deputy Editor Alys Denby:

.

He’s accused the Government of deliberately avoiding parliamentary scrutiny and using fear as an instrument of coercion. That, he says, is how democracy dies.

As England was put back under stay-at-home-orders, he spoke to CapX about the ethics and efficacy of lockdown.

Share this article

set page as preferred source in google set page as preferred source in google

Written by

Alys Denby

@alysdenby
Alys Denby is the opinion & features editor at City AM.

CapX depends on the generosity of its readers.

If you value what we do, please consider making a donation.

Amount
Period

Your message has not been sent.

More Ideas

The wiring diagram behind Thatcher's revolution
Economics

The wiring diagram behind Thatcher’s revolution

Even before he became Prime Minister in July, Andy Burnham had talked about the country in institutional, positively mechanical ways. He promised to ‘give Britain the circuit-breaker it needs’, and said that his Number 10 North, part of the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet based – where else? – in Manchester, would be […]

How Britain went bust, 50 years ago today
Popular
Economics

How Britain went bust, 50 years ago today

On September 29, 1976, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, announced his intention to apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $3.9 billion loan, the largest ever requested. Britain, The Economist announced, was ‘bust’. This was a national humiliation, the crux of a decade of economic turmoil. Britain before 1979 was not […]

Labour's favourite economist has growth backwards
Popular
Economics

Labour’s favourite economist has growth backwards

Why haven’t we grown in the last decade? We are experiencing the longest spell of workers experiencing no average wage growth in real terms for well over a century – ‘the longest in history since consistent wage records exist, dating back to Victorian times,’ as a paper in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy shows. […]

THE CAPITALIST

FOLLOW US

© 2026 CapX