When the history of this absurd era is eventually written, one major theme will surely be the ease with which those unfit and unqualified rose not just to national but global eminence.

In the Age of Idiocracy, the idiot, after all, must be king.

Scotland’s own Neil Oliver, for instance, was a middling TV presenter until he parlayed vaccine conspiracy into international celebrity.

Donald Trump’s current pick for US ambassador to Malaysia is a publicity-seeker called Nick Adams. He achieved Twitter "fame" by endlessly claiming he’s “Alpha Male”, telling parents to “take your kids to Hooters”, and cheering on those refusing the Covid vaccine.

Finding the sweet spot where anti-vaxx messaging meets politics is a guaranteed passage to money, fame and power. Just ask GB News. The right-wing channel aired the US conspiracist Naomi Wolf comparing the vaccine rollout to “mass murder”.

When that future history of this era is written, after the chapter on the rise of the idiot, the next section should recount the consequences of their reign.

Read more by Neil Mackay

We see some of the profound real-world results in Britain today: a child has died in Liverpool’s Alder Hey hospital after contracting measles.

They were the second child to die in Britain since 2023; 17 children have been treated at Alder Hey since June.

It’s an agonising truth, but such deaths were all but unavoidable given the damage caused by widespread dissemination of anti-vaccine conspiracy in Britain.

Millions of children worldwide are at risk of death and illness due to declining vaccination rates, according to the........

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