Vindictive comments about Captain Sir Tom Moore mark a new low for our country

As soon as I heard the news that Captain Sir Tom Moore had tested positive for Covid-19, weeks after returning from a holiday in Barbados, my heart sank.

I knew, having interviewed his daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, shortly before Christmas, that the trolls would soon come out of the woodwork and start abusing her, as she told me they have done since her father, who celebrated his 100th birthday in April, first came into the public consciousness. Sure enough, the blame was soon being placed at her door, with accusations that she had endangered his life.

What I wasn’t expecting was that, this time, the vitriol would also be directed at Captain Tom. “Legal or otherwise, it’s irresponsible. This is why Britain is in this mess,” said one Twitter user, while another added that he’d behaved in a “selfish way”.

Read more: Captain Tom Moore dies aged 100

These shameful, vindictive comments mark a new low for our country, already torn and divided by our response to the pandemic. How far it feels now from those sunny days of the first lockdown, when we clapped for NHS workers every Thursday and got behind Captain Tom’s efforts to do 100 laps of his garden in time for his birthday.

We felt that if Captain Tom, who’d served his country in the Second World War, could get through it, so could we. He personified our Blitz spirit, and we donated millions to his cause to raise money for the NHS.

Now, that mood has soured, even while we root for him to pull through. It’s a process of seeping jealousy, which began last year when Hannah was cast in that all too familiar, sexist role of the “manipulative woman”, and accused by social media trolls of milking her father’s fame.  

She told me: “All I wanted was to give my dad a voice, to allow him to hear and allow him to be heard, but I started picking up hate on social media. It’s ageism, too, because anyone can see I couldn’t make Dad do anything he didn’t want to do and nor would I.”

As anyone with elderly parents knows, the risk to them is everywhere, and you never know which day might be your last with them. A simple fall in the kitchen – as in Captain Tom’s case two years ago – could be disastrous. But they are still adults, with agency, in charge of their own destiny.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised. As a nation, we suffer from Tall Poppy Syndrome, and love to build people up before knocking them down again. We’ve seen it happen to celebrities time and time again, from David Beckham to Meghan Markle.  

But to see this happening now with Captain Tom is shocking, especially because of his age and status as a national treasure. There’s been sniping since the family, overwhelmed by press attention, hired a PR, as if they were exploiting the limelight. However, as Hannah said, what happened to them was a happy accident, but not one they could cope with on their own.

At the end of a year when Captain Tom gave so much of his precious time, effort and spirit to galvanising the nation, are we really going to judge him or his family for fulfilling a bucket list dream and going to Barbados, on a flight paid for by British Airways as a thank you from the nation, at a time when it was legal and there was a travel corridor?

We are better than that. But the sad reality is, over the past few months, the government has been encouraging exactly this tendency towards fanatical curtain-twitching behaviour. Desperate to cover up their own myriad failings, they’ve sought to shift the blame to us. They’ve blown out of all proportion the knock-on effects of the behaviour of a minority of die-hard rule-breakers, when the consequences of their own dithering have been dire.

Walkers have been arrested and we’ve been judged for going to the park, as all the while Boris Johnson prevaricates over the latest action he’s required to take and Rishi Sunak puts the country’s coffers before community.

Shamefully, it’s worked. We’ve turned against each other, jealous and judgemental of other people’s behaviour, angry the Moores got a holiday when we didn’t, or bitter that our neighbours have bent the rules slightly.

“I wish I could have seen my Dad,” someone sniped. Well, Captain Tom lives with his daughter and has done for 15 years. Remember that, if you’re unjustly feeling furious about what’s happened.

Turn your ire on Johnson and his gang of cronies, not a family who’ve helped us in this awful year, and have set up the Captain Tom Foundation to make sure they can go on helping us.

We walked with Tom then, so please let’s walk with him now.

This piece was published before the death of Captain Sir Tom Moore was announced