Did John Woodcock call for "Covid-style lockdown" of the UK immigration protests.

Matt Goodwin is professor of politics in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Kent. Yesterday he posted on X: “A senior government advisor has called for a Covid-style lockdown of the UK immigration protests.”

In his statement to Times Radio John Woodcock did not actually use the term “lockdown”. He said that “the British public will back the govt in whatever measures they feel are necessary to get this situation under control…. Covid was an emergency so measures were supported by the public.” Questionable - but let’s leave that aside. What’s really on the agenda? It’s on his Wikipedia page.

In November 2020 Woodcock was appointed by the UK Government as an Independent Adviser on Political Violence and Disruption.

In November 2023 (shortly after Israel launched its genocide on Gaza) Lord Walney predictably “advocated giving police the power to ban pro-Palestinian protests on the streets of Britain if they were deemed to contribute to an atmosphere of intimidation against Jews. He said he would be updating his review to include ‘looking at the threshold for the police to ban a march’.

“In May 2024, it was revealed that Woodcock would recommend banning groups like Palestine Action and Just Stop Oil, in an upcoming report. This could involve restricting their right to assembly and ability to fundraise.^”

John Woodcock began his political career as a SPAD to Gordon Brown and John Hutton, and became the epitome of a right-wing Labour MP. In 2018, after allegations of sexual harassment, he had the Labour whip withdrawn and then left the Party.

Woodcock was an enthusiastic participant in the campaign to undermine Jeremy Corbyn, a supporter of Palestinian rights, after he was elected Leader of the Labour Party, using false allegations of antisemitism.

In April 2020 Woodcock was a member of the consortium that rescued the Jewish Chronicle after it had been put into liquidation. The consortium was headed by former BBC executive and Director of Communications in Downing Street under Theresa May, Sir Robbie Gibb and included “a number of pro-Israel figures within the British media and political establishment”. Three named were Commissioner for Public Appointments and former chair of the Charity Commission, William Shawcross; ex-Labour MP John Woodcock; and journalist John Ware who in July 2019 had fronted the special edition of Panorama: “Reporter John Ware goes inside the anti-Semitism crisis gripping Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party”.

The Jewish Chronicle had been pushed towards financial ruin - not because of “the dire state of the media industry and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic” - but by the cost of libel lawsuits. This was pointed out in July 2023 in an open letter to the Chair of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) by fifteen victims of the lies and smears of the Jewish Chronicle. “IPSO had found 33 breaches of the code of conduct by the JC in three years, in which period there had also been four admissions of libel… This was in our view a shocking level of non-compliance, equivalent to one breach in every four issues published over the period, yet the IPSO Board considered two training sessions to be sufficient remedy”.

Back to John Woodcock. Since 2016 he has been in a relationship with the distinguished journalist and Assistant Editor of The Spectator, Isabel Hardman. In the 2009 New Year Honours list Isabel Hardman’s father Michael Hardman was a recipient of an MBE as one of the founders of CAMRA, and "we teased him when, at his investiture, he was awarded his gong for 'services to the brewing industry' alongside curry magnate Enam Ali". In 2015 Isabel Hardman rightly criticized the use of the Honours system to reward unexceptional political work.

Boris Johnson nominated John Woodcock for a life peerage in his 2019 Dissolution Honours, and and in September 2020 Woodcock was created Baron Walney of the Isle of Walney in the County of Cumbria. In July 2021 he married Isabel Hardman making her an ironical Baroness Walney. There must be a headline somewhere about the improbable union of Hardman and Woodcock.