George Osborne has admitted that the Tories deliberately politicised the science

The scandal over Dominic Cummings attending the scientific advisory group meetings revolves around the concept of independent expert advice.

The problem of course is that embedding a very senior government adviser into the scientific advisory group absolutely trashes any claim that the advice they're giving to government is independent from government.

Having a senior member of the government in the meeting changes the entire dynamic, making it much less likely that the scientists will openly criticise or condemn government policy when they think it's wrong.

Everyone knows that people are less likely to speak up freely about institutional problems and mistakes if one of the bosses is in the room, especially when the boss has got a very recent track record of ideologically purging dozens of people who dared to stand up to him, like Cummings did in the Tory mass expulsion in September.

It's beyond obvious that if the scientific advice is to be considered independent, senior government figures should not be embedded in the scientific advisory group.

The official government line is that Cummings was only there to observe, ask questions, and act as an interface between the scientists and 10 Downing Street, which is bad enough for the aforementioned reasons, but former Tory Chancellor George Osborne has openly admitted the actual truth in a remarkable Tweet.

It's absolutely unmistakable that Osborne is admitting that the purpose of embedding Cummings in the scientific advisory group was to politicise the science.

In any kind of functional democracy the scientists would deliver their advice to the government, and then the government would use that advice as the basis for the political decisions they make.

The scientists propose certain measures, then the government combines this scientific advice with the advice they're receiving from their economic advisers to make the political decision whether the suggested measures are justifiable.

Deliberately infecting the scientific advisory group with the politics is clearly the wrong way to go, and one of the main reasons we're now in such a terrible mess, with the highest death rate in Europe, and one of the largest death tolls in the entire world.

The concept of allowing senior government spin doctors to interfere with the scientific or expert advice is an incredibly dangerous one, but George Osborne has come out and openly admitted that this was exactly what the government was doing by embedding Cummings in the scientific advisory group.

The most infuriating thing about this is the absolute non-reaction of people who should be horrified about it.

Recall how every criticism of the government's lamentable inaction in the crucial early stages of the Covid-19 crisis was met with the faux-outrage moralising of "how very dare you politicise this crisis!"

Anyone who has dared to point out how a decade of wanton Tory austerity destruction severely damaged our national ability to respond effectively to the crisis has witnessed the "don't politicise" howling reaching absolute fever pitch.

But then the architect of this austerity ruination comes out and admits that the Tory government deliberately politicised the science, and the "don't politicise" mob say nothing.

Funny isn't it, how their vehement objections to "politicisation" only come into play when people are using facts and evidence to criticise the Tory government, but when a very senior Tory-establishment figure openly admits that the Tory government deliberately politicised the crisis, they have absolutely nothing to say about it whatever!

Almost as if these "don't politicise" screechers are a bunch of absolute hypocrites driven purely by fealty to their Tory lords and masters isn't it?

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